


The Only Engine of Survival

by Savoytruffle



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Drama, F/M, M/M, Minor Character Death, Mirror Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-08
Updated: 2010-11-08
Packaged: 2017-12-11 19:31:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/802360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Savoytruffle/pseuds/Savoytruffle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim Trenton may have grown up on a distant colonial backwater, but that doesn’t mean he intends to stay there. As far as he’s concerned, Castius VI is nothing but a useless colony full of hopeless losers heading nowhere and doing it really fucking slowly. Well, except for Jim’s mom. She’s awesome and badass and she’s taught him everything he needs to know to take the Terran Empire by storm. Oh, and then there’s the new and surprisingly competent doctor at the local clinic. He might not be so bad either...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://startrekbigbang.livejournal.com/profile)[**startrekbigbang**](http://startrekbigbang.livejournal.com/). Deepest appreciation to [](http://affectingly.livejournal.com/profile)[**affectingly**](http://affectingly.livejournal.com/) for encouraging me to try something big and then for lending her mad world-building skillz to the creation of this universe and its players; to [](http://cordelianne.livejournal.com/profile)[**cordelianne**](http://cordelianne.livejournal.com/) for superhuman levels of support both on this fic and on everything else that went down while I was writing it; to [](http://graceandfire.livejournal.com/profile)[**graceandfire**](http://graceandfire.livejournal.com/) and [](http://margarks.livejournal.com/profile)[**margarks**](http://margarks.livejournal.com/) for excellent beta work and general reassurances; to [](http://phinarei21.livejournal.com/profile)[**phinarei21**](http://phinarei21.livejournal.com/) for testing and cheerleading; and to [](http://sparkysparky.livejournal.com/profile)[**sparkysparky**](http://sparkysparky.livejournal.com/) and [](http://tocourtdisaster.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://tocourtdisaster.livejournal.com/)**tocourtdisaster** for tremendous artistic contributions and great artistic generosity.
> 
> [ **LISTEN TO THE FANMIX!** ](http://tocourtdisaster.livejournal.com/67050.html)
> 
> **[SEE ALL THE ART!](http://sparkysparky.livejournal.com/133838.html) **

 

_**Part One** _

“What did you just call me?”

A hand closes around the collar of Jim’s shirt, yanking him backwards, then spinning him until he’s face to face with a fuming teenage boy. A boy _and_ three of his friends, each of whom must have about two years on Jim and at least thirty pounds.

“Relax, cupcake,” Jim says. “I wasn’t talking about you.” He feels the fist in his collar start to loosen. He smirks. “I was talking about your sister.”

The fist refastens itself to the front of Jim’s shirt and hauls him upward until his feet barely touch the ground. He resists the urge to roll his eyes.

Jim Trenton is very good at picking fights, but sometimes it’s just too easy.

“Hey, dickweed,” the kid is saying, “maybe you can’t count, but there’re four of us and one of you.”

Jim shrugs, or at least shrugs the best he can from his hanging position. “So get some more guys and then it’ll be an even fight.”

Jim takes the first punch and comes up smiling. He licks his lips, blocks the second punch and lands a solid kick to Cupcake’s stomach, sending him flying. Cupcake’s friend steps in, then, and Jim manages to block a couple more punches before the other two pull their thumbs out of their asses and pile on.

He knows he’s going down now, and quickly, but he focuses on doing what damage he can and is pleased that not one of the boys walks away unscathed.

Of course Jim barely walks away at all, but he does, and that’s what counts.

After a few minutes spent on the ground catching his breath, he stumbles to his feet and staggers the three quarters of a mile back home.

He finds his mom in the office. As he enters, Elena Trenton turns from her desk toward the door and gives him a slow once over. “How many?” she asks at last.

“Four,” Jim says.

“Older?”

Jim nods.

“Bigger?”

Jim nods again.

Elena nods back at him and finally rewards him with a small smile. “Get a towel before you get blood on the carpet.” She glances down at her PADD. “When I’m done here, we’d better take you by the clinic.”

Jim scowls around his swollen lip. In his not-so-humble estimation, the staff of the clinic, like everyone else on Castius VI Colony, are total morons.

“Mo-om, c’mon, I’m—”

She cuts him off with a look.

Jim shuts his mouth, but pushes his bottom lip into a pout. The annoying thing is that he knows his mother, not being a total moron herself, shares his low opinion of the clinic staff.

 _But they’re morons with medical equipment,_ she always reminds him.

Like Jim gives a fuck. Short of an internal bleed, tricorders and regenerators are frivolous luxuries. His mother started training him in emergency field medicine when he was nine.

 _Why bother?_ he’d asked her once when he was twelve, words ground from between gritted teeth as she showed him how to set his own broken arm. _You’re just going to take me to the fucking clinic later._

 _Because you have better things to do than wait for your bones to knit themselves back together on their own,_ she’d said, before letting go of the arm and reaching up to trace the jagged cut above Jim’s eyebrow. _And because this is big enough to scar._

 _So?_ Given the sharp, stabbing pain in Jim’s fucking arm, a stupid cut felt like the least of his worries.

Elena had laughed. _You’ll be as handsome as your father one day_ , she told him. _Never underestimate the value of a pretty face._

Three years later and Jim’s long since discovered girls, but he still isn’t sure they’re worth the time and trouble and he thinks he might prefer the scars.

And fuck his good-for-nothing father, anyway. He hates the way his mother smiles in those rare moments when she mentions him. What’s Jim supposed to care for some nameless drifter who knocked up his mom and then fucked off for greener pastures?

Fuck him and fuck his pretty face.

Scars make you a man.

His mother glances up again from her PADD, her gaze sharp.

Jim goes to get the towel and waits.

 

 

 

 

Jim can still walk when they get to the clinic, so his mother drops him off and goes to take care of other errands. When Jim gets inside, the waiting room is empty.

He looks around for a moment, listening for signs of activity, but hears and sees nothing. He’s more than ready to comm his mom and tell her the clinic’s been abandoned, but he knows she’ll come and check so he’d better be sure.

“Hello?” he calls in the general direction of the exam room. “Anybody home?”

“Are you dying?” an unfamiliar voice yells from somewhere in the back.

The funny thing is, Jim finds himself looking down to check. “Um, no?” he yells back.

“Good,” the voice shouts. “Then sit down and shut up and I’ll get to you when I get to you.”

For a couple of seconds, Jim considers walking away.

He sits down instead.

Jim’s not sure who this asshole thinks he is, but he likes him already.

 

About twenty minutes later, a woman walks out. She looks at Jim and gestures back toward the doorway she just passed through. “He says you can go on back now.”

She’s just another patient, if the lack of uniform or lab coat and the way she walks out the front door are any indication. Jim shrugs to himself and heads back.

He finds the doctor standing in an uncurtained exam area, his broad back to Jim, head bent over a PADD.

“With you in a minute,” he mumbles, stabbing at the PADD a few times before proceeding to shake it. “Stupid piece of shit.”

Jim looks around. Aside from the doctor, the back is just as empty as the front was. “Where is everybody?” he asks.

The doctor doesn’t bother turning around. “I threw ’em out.”

Jim looks around again just to be sure. “You threw out the _entire_ clinic staff?”

“They were getting in my way,” the doctor grumbles, still fighting with the PADD. “The only thing worse than a pack of morons is a pack of morons with medical equipment.” The doctor starts banging on the side of the PADD with the heel of his palm. “Goddammit.”

“That’s not going to fix it, you know.”

“Fuck it,” the doctor says, tossing the offending object onto the counter with a clatter (which really isn’t going to fix it either). “I’m a doctor, not a computer tech.”

Jim doesn’t bother suppressing his chuckle.

When the doctor finally turns around to look at Jim, Jim is surprised by how young he is. Young and kinda hot.

Meanwhile, the doctor does a double-take that turns into a slow survey. He lets out a low whistle. “Shit,” he says. “Someone got you good.”

Jim smirks. “You should see the other guys.”

“Sure, kid.” The doctor doesn’t even crack a smile, just shakes his head and turns to grab a tricorder. “Take off your shirt and get up on the bed.”

“Aren’t you even going to buy me a drink first?” Jim quips.

The doctor looks back again, scowling. “Don’t be disgusting. What’re you – fifteen?”

“Nineteen,” Jim says, pulling off his jacket and tossing it over a chair.

The doctor raises an eyebrow. “Try again.”

“Okay, seventeen.” Jim tugs his shirt over his head.

The eyebrow holds steady. “Keep going.”

“Fine, fifteen,” Jim admits as he hops up onto the biobed. “And a half.”

“And a half,” the doctor repeats. “Well, then.”

“Fuck off,” Jim says. “Are you even old enough to be a doctor?”

The doctor ignores that, setting the tricorder on the tray next to the bed and turning to the computer console. “You got a name, kid?”

“Do you?” Jim asks.

“McCoy. Leonard McCoy.”

“Trenton,” Jim mocks. “Jim Trenton.”

“Brat,” Doctor Lenny ( _hmm, no_ ) grumbles, entering Jim’s name to pull up his medical record. Jim watches as he scrolls down. And down. And down. “Jesus, kid. If you’ve got a crush on one of those idiot nurses, there’re easier ways to get a date than letting people beat the shit out of you every couple of weeks.”

 _Once a week,_ Jim thinks.

Exactly once a week, in fact, but not every fight requires a clinic visit after.

Jim shrugs. “I don’t play well with others.”

“Imagine my surprise,” Doctor Leo ( _eh, not really_ ) mutters, as he begins to run the tricorder around Jim’s head.

“Haven’t seen you around here before,” Jim says, as The Doc ( _meh_ ) finishes up his scan, setting the tricorder aside.

“It’s my first day,” Doctor McCranky ( _maybe_ ) informs him. He picks up and loads a hypospray and then jabs the thing straight into Jim’s neck with neither warning nor finesse.

“Ow, _fuck_ ,” Jim yelps. “Are you _sure_ you have a medical license?”

“Highest ranking medical professional on this colony,” says Doctor McSadist ( _and, yeah, Jim may go with that one_ ), as if that’s supposed to mean something.

Jim snorts. “Not like it’s all that hard. We’re in the middle of fucking nowhere, in case you haven’t noticed.” Jim pauses a moment, holding his lips still as the dermal regenerator runs over them. “I mean, shit,” he continues, when it’s shifted to his bruised and broken knuckles, “you met your staff. Take a walk around town, it’s all the same. An entire useless colony full of hopeless losers heading nowhere and doing it really fucking slowly.”

As he speaks, Jim studies Mac ( _too generic_ ) and his almost absentminded proficiency and wonders what the fuck a halfway decent doctor is doing way out here.

Though he’s mostly just baiting McCoy-Leonard-McCoy, every word of Jim’s little tirade happens to be true. The only upside to Jim’s utter contempt for everything and everyone on Castius VI is that it keeps him focused and makes picking the fights almost as natural as breathing.

Sometimes he doesn’t even mind that he isn’t allowed to win.

“So what does that make you, kid?” Sawbones ( _and that’s close, so close_ ) sets down the regen unit and moves to add notes to Jim’s chart. “Just another hopeless loser heading nowhere?”

How Jim would love to say no.

He slides off the bed instead, and pulls his shirt over his head. “Must be,” he says, shrugging into his jacket. He takes a few steps toward the exit before looking back over his shoulder. “Catch you later, Bones.”

 _Perfect_ , Jim thinks as he walks out through the waiting room and tells the next person to go on back.

 

 

 

_Click-click._

_Click-click._

_Click-click._

Jim sits on a biobed, swinging his legs and twirling a hypospray between his fingers, snapping the vial in and out each go-round, stealing glances in Bones’ direction, waiting.

“Damn it, Jim!” Bones snaps. “That’s not a toy.”

_Bingo._

Jim smirks over at Bones, who’s filling out forms on his PADD, pausing occasionally to cast warning glares at his staff, and now, finally, at Jim.

Jim sets the tip of the hypo against his bicep. “Do you think if I injected just a few ccs of this into myself every day, I’d build up an immunity?”

Bones closes the distance between them in two quick strides and snatches the hypo from Jim’s hand, ejecting the cartridge into his palm.

“It’s just tetrovaline,” Jim says. “Geez.”

“You’re sixteen, not five,” Bones grumbles. “Don’t be an idiot.”

Jim tries not to resent that remark. He isn’t an idiot. He just plays one in the holos.

Besides, it was a serious question.

He continues to swing his legs as he looks around for something else to fiddle with. Finding nothing within reach, he begins to tap his fingers against the edge of the bed.

“Must you do that?” Bones asks.

Jim shrugs. “I’m bored.”

“And I’m working,” Bones says.

It’s their usual schtick.

“Couldn’t you try to make it a little more interesting?” Jim asks.

Bones glares. “Don’t you have anywhere to be?”

“School’s out,” Jim says. “And I thought you didn’t like it when I stayed after to get in fights.”  
Bones grunts and goes back to his PADD.

Jim’s down to one fight a month, these days. Not that Bones has anything to do with that. If anything, Jim would have kept up the once a week just to have an excuse for clinic visits, but his mom decided he’d honed his skills as much as was going to be possible in this environment and wanted him to direct his focus elsewhere.

And Jim knows she was right.

So now he just comes to the clinic without an excuse. And usually more than once a week.

He lets Bones think he’s the one keeping Jim out of trouble.

He lets his mom think he’s learning more about medicine.

Which he is – as a side thing.

Jim hops down from the bed and walks over to a supply shelf, running his eyes along the rows of pharmaceuticals, reciting the name, indications and side effects of each compound in his head until he hits one he doesn’t know.

He picks it up and shows it to Bones. “What’s this one for?”

Bones looks over and scowls. “That’s cyalodin and it’ll kill you. Put it back and stop screwing around.” Bones watches Jim until the vial has been replaced on the shelf. “You ever consider – hey, I don’t know – _studying_?”

Jim finishes naming off the compounds in the row just for the sake of irony before he shrugs and says, “Why bother?”

Sometimes Jim thinks all he ever does is study. He studies for school during class because his instructors are stupid and boring. Then at night, he sits down with his mother, sometimes for hours, and learns what he really needs to know. And in between, he’s here at the clinic or over at the junkyard, seeing what he can fix or cobble together. Jim never wastes time. It’s not like he has any friends.

“What’d you get on that Imperial History exam?”

“Seventy-eight,” Jim says.

He has no idea why the hell Bones cares but he kinda hates it when Bones gives him that look.

And that sigh.

“You’re a bright kid. You could do better if you applied yourself.”

That’s probably true. His exact score had been 77.68, which was six one-hundredths higher than Jim had technically been aiming for. It gets tricky when you try to account for the subjective nature of partial credit, and Elena was satisfied, but Jim _does_ think he could do better. He’s working on it.

“I thought you wanted to get off this rock,” Bones says. “You’ll never get into the Academy with scores like that.”

Jim shrugs like he doesn’t care. Like he’d just as soon talk his way into a scut job on some passing trade vessel. He’s said as much to Bones before.

See, the thing about Imperial History? It’s all bullshit anyway.

With all that talk about battles and heroes, bravery and loyalty, great men (and the occasional savvy and well placed woman), you might get the impression that the Empire is a meritocracy. A brutal meritocracy, sure, but the kind of place where anyone – anyone who’s smart enough, strong enough and _ruthless_ enough, anyway – can claw his way to the top if he tries.

At least until the next smart, strong and ruthless bastard rises to take his place.

And, yeah, that’s mostly how it works – you know, if your name is Kuppalli or Ahn, Bamazé or Skittol, Powell or Kirk. And if you’re born, or at least raised, on Terra.

But if your name is Trenton and you’re born without a father on some colonial backwater, it’s a different story.

People like Bones like to tell kids like Jim that talent and tenacity will take you far.

Of course, if people like Bones bothered to look around for a minute (at fucking Castius VI), they might see that it’s all a lie.

Lucky for Jim, he has his mom to tell him the truth: Unless you’re fortunate enough to be born into a powerful family – or to find your way into a powerful family’s favor and under their protection – all talent will do is get you killed. The powerful don’t stay powerful by working hard and trying their best. They do it by eliminating their competition.

 _If_ their competition is stupid enough to let itself get noticed.

Anyway, Bones is wrong about Jim’s scores. They’re _exactly_ what Jim needs to make it into the Academy – right at the bottom of the class.

 

 

Jim isn’t jogging to the clinic. He’s walking. He may be walking quickly, but that’s only because the clinic closed twenty-seven minutes ago. Not that it matters – Bones always works late and Jim could always wait until tomorrow – but it’s been seven days and Jim doesn’t want to wait another one.

The front entrance is locked up, but Jim knows the code for the employee door around back.

He’s on the verge of announcing his return when he hears an unfamiliar female voice.

“…even care that I’m dying of boredom out here?”

“Of course I care, damn it,” Jim hears Bones say. “I just don’t know what the fuck you expect me to do about it.”

“Well, I don’t know,” the woman says. “Maybe you could start by actually coming _home_ once in a while.”

Jim stands by the door, frozen in his tracks. It’s not like he didn’t know Bones was married, but he’s never really thought about what that means. He’s never considered the idea of a Bones beyond the clinic. A Bones that’s not just a doctor or even a guy, but a husband.

“Things get busy,” husband-Bones is saying.

“Yeah,” the woman mutters sarcastically, “I can see you’re really swamped here.” He can imagine her looking around in disdain. “Seeing as the clinic _closed_ half an hour ago.”

“Shit, Joce, clinic shifts aren’t work,” Bones growls. “They’re fucking babysitting. I have real projects, you know. Things I need time to work on. You used to like that. Don’t even pretend you would have looked twice at me – let alone married me – if I wasn’t ambitious.”

“Oh, is that why I married you?” the woman asks. “It gets hard to remember. I mean, I have a vague recollection of ambition, but then you went and dragged me off to Castius fucking VI of all places – what the fuck am I supposed to think about that?”

“You’re not supposed to think,” Bones snaps. “You’re supposed to trust me. This is going to be good for us.”

“Trust you? I don’t know what century you think we’re living in, but I’m not a fool. Maybe if you actually bothered to _tell me_ what the fuck we’re doing here, I’d be willing to make a few sacrifices, but right now I’m finding it really hard to believe that being stranded on this colonial backwater is actually worth it.”

“Look, Joce,” Bones says, snide and impatient, “I know the social season out here isn’t up to your exacting standards, but that doesn’t mean—”

“Fuck you, Len. I’m not talking about the goddamn social season and you know it. I have a career, too, you know. Or at least I used to, until you killed it.”

Jim hears Bones sigh, his tone taking a conciliatory turn. “It’s just a couple of years, alright? After that, I promise you, we’ll be set.”

“This isn’t good for us, Len,” the woman insists. “It can’t be. That social season you hate so much is important. A young and upcoming doctor should be meeting the right people and making connections, not babysitting backward colonists.”

“Joce…”

“I mean it, Len,” she repeats, but Jim can hear her softening. “You say you’re so ambitious, you should be listening to me. I know this stuff, remember? Or have you forgotten the reason _you_ actually courted _me_ in the first place?”

There’s a pause in the conversation and Jim strains to hear.

“Well,” Bones voice has gone low and sultry, “not like it was the _only_ reason.”

Jim hears the shuffling of feet, the wet sound of lips meeting lips, a gasp followed by a moan.

He decides _not_ to stick around for the makeup sex.

 

 

Jim’s walking quickly again, away from the clinic now, and he can’t slow down and he kind of hates himself for it.

Hates himself for that tiny bit of disappointment he felt when he and his mother left the planet in a small shuttle a week ago for the flight training he’d been looking forward to for months. Disappointment where there should have been nothing but anticipation. Hates himself for the brief feeling of excitement as they landed back on Castius VI. Excitement where there should have been nothing but contempt.

Jim fucking hates Castius VI. He always has and he always will. That she lives here and raises him here is the only flaw Jim’s ever found in his otherwise perfect mother – cool and cunning, fierce and beautiful, fucking brilliant and way too fucking good for this dump.

The wrongness of it needles at Jim and he’s not sure exactly how his father is to blame, but he’s sure that he is, and this is how Jim knows that attachments are stupid.

Attachments compromise your judgment. Attachments make you weak.

It’s the one lesson he never needed his mother to teach him; she shows him every day.

 

 

Jim stays away from the clinic for three days.

On the fourth, he goes back.

Not like it means anything, though.

Castius VI is fucking boring is all.

 

 

Parties are fucking boring, too.

Jim hasn’t really been to any before, but if the Prospector’s Day Ball is any indication, they basically consist of large rooms full of boring people talking about boring things while subtly (or not so subtly) panting after the attention of the few people at the party they imagine to be halfway interesting.

The goal, his mother has informed him, is to be one of those few.

Lucky for Jim, the key to being interesting seems to be looking bored. Apparently, the more one looks as if one is imagining about a thousand other things one might normally be doing that are a thousand times more interesting than the party itself, the more popular one becomes.

Which means that within half an hour of arrival, Jim finds himself surrounded by girls (and a few women), all vying for his attention.

And all he has to do is act naturally.

Jim tunes back into the conversation surrounding him in time to catch the tail end of a question.

“…think Gabeba’s dress is amazing?”

It takes him a moment to remember which one in the circle is supposed to be Gabeba. He’s been paying more attention to the interactions elsewhere in the room. His eyes land on the girl whose preening is most obvious at the moment.

( _Veil your contempt_ , he hears his mother saying, _but flaunt your indifference_.)

He offers a small smirk and a non-committal, “Mmm.”

The girl tosses her hair and smiles back at him, looking smug for the attention. “My tailor says that Tchao Bamazé’s wife wore one just like it at the Imperial Ball in Dakar.”

Jim’s eyes flick over the dress again and he resists the urge to roll his eyes. He’s studied holos of that event. The dress looks nothing like Aimée Bamazé’s.

Rather than answer, Jim tests another of his mother’s suggestions and turns to look at the girl standing _next to_ Gabeba. Well, at her cleavage anyway. He reaches out with easy confidence – like he doesn’t expect to be slapped for his trouble or doesn’t care if he is – and traces her plunging neckline with the pad of his index finger.

“Nice necklace,” he says.

“Thank you,” the girl giggles as Gabeba glares daggers in her direction.

Smart girls would be mad at _him_ , Jim thinks, but these girls have been taught to turn on each other. He wonders why they don’t see through their own socialization, but knows it will prove useful in the future.

Gabeba steps closer to him, brushing his arm with her breasts as if by accident. “We could go see the gardens,” she murmurs.

Jim scans the room again. It _is_ tempting, but his mother is around here somewhere, watching, and the skills he’s meant to be honing tonight are social, not sexual.

“Maybe later,” he mutters absently, distracted, along with the rest of the crowd, by the woman who’s just appeared at the entrance to the ballroom.

She’s gorgeous and she obviously knows it. Her regal posture and the haughty set of her lips announce to the room at large that she could own it, even as the artful ennui in her eyes denies that it would be worth her time. Her glossy auburn waves are perfectly piled atop her head, and even the thick tendrils falling to frame her face and neck exude an air of calculated whimsy. When Jim’s eyes fall to her gown – a clear and credible homage to the Bamazé dress – his curiosity is piqued.

She could be somebody.

He’s still looking for clues as to _whom_ when a man steps up from behind and tucks her hand, glittering with jewels, into his arm.

Jim makes a concerted effort to keep his jaw from dropping as _Bones_ escorts the woman who must be his wife into the party.

Jim has to wait a good half an hour before Bones is finally left standing alone. The man’s definitely got the _bored-and-at-least-a-thousand-other-places-I’d-rather-be_ facial expression down pat, but somehow it’s failing to attract admirers.

Probably something to do his body language, which isn’t so much _ennui_ as _abject hostility_.

Undeterred, Jim makes his approach from behind, stopping just over Bones’ left shoulder. “Your wife is hot,” he says.

Bones spins around with a scowl on his face. When he recognizes Jim, that scowl doesn’t so much disappear as _deepen_.

“Jesus, kid, I almost punched you.”

Jim smirks. “C’mon, Bones, you’re a healer, not a fighter.”

Bones just raises an eyebrow. “Try me,” he says.

Jim laughs, enjoying the party more already. He gives Bones a slow once-over, letting out a low whistle. “You clean up nice, Doctor McCoy.”

Bones looks down at the mostly empty lowball in his hand. “I need another drink.”

“You’re supposed to tell me I clean up nice, too,” Jim says, lifting his arms and executing a slow 360-degree turn to show off his new clothes – and body.

He turned seventeen a few months back and has since outgrown nearly every piece of clothing he owns – the pants too short to cover his ankles, the shirts too tight to stretch across the new breadth of his shoulders and chest. He remembers shopping with his mother, the smile on her face as he stepped out of the dressing room, the pride in her voice as she told him the time had come to learn all the ways to get what you want from people _without_ using force.

He gives Bones a winning smile.

Bones rolls his eyes. “What’re you doing here, kid?”

“It’s the event of the season,” Jim says.

A waiter passes by with a tray of something bubbly. Bones scowls at it on principle but trades out his empty lowball for one of the flutes, downing half of it in one go.

“Didn’t figure you for a socialite,” he says.

Jim shrugs. “I’m beginning to see the appeal.”

Before Bones can answer, his wife appears at his side, slipping her arm into his and nodding toward the champagne flute in his opposite hand.

“You didn’t get me one?” she asks.

Bones hands over the half-full glass and she takes a delicate sip, eyeing Jim over the rim.

“Who’s your little friend, Len?”

The question (and the name) irks Jim, just like he’s sure she intended, but he works hard not to let it show.

“Just some kid from the clinic,” Bones says. “Likes to get himself beat all to hell every other week or so.”

The answer irks Jim even more, but he grits his teeth and forces a smile as he steps forward and extends his hand. “Jim,” he says. “Jim Trenton.”

“Jocelyn _McCoy_ ,” she says, finally letting go of ‘Len’ long enough to shake Jim’s hand.

“So nice to _finally_ meet you,” Jim says. “How do you like it here on Castius VI?”

Jocelyn takes another sip of her drink before answering. “Such a charming little colony,” she manages at last.

Then her eyes narrow slightly, her head tilting as she studies Jim. She looks like she’s about to ask him something when Bones suddenly snatches the flute from her hand and places it on a passing waiter’s tray.

“Let’s dance,” Bones says, whisking her off onto the dance floor without giving her a chance to argue.

Or bothering to say goodbye.

 

 

Seduction, Jim’s mother tells him, isn’t about finding some place to stick your dick. That’s cake. True seduction is the art of convincing the people _you_ need that you’re the one _they_ need, and then convincing those people that anything and everything you want them to do was their idea in the first place.

It takes a bit of practice before he hits his stride, and there are much more formidable targets to come, but Jim finds that he’s a natural.

With everyone except Bones.

Jim hasn’t decided yet exactly what it is he wants from Bones, but he’s increasingly obsessed with the question of how he’d go about getting it. As far as Jim can tell, Bones is immune to both subtle and direct forms of flattery and the man possesses an unnaturally keen eye for Jim’s bullshit.

Well, most of it, anyway.

Because Bones still thinks that Jim’s an unmotivated, unfocused underachiever with a big temper and no eye for the big picture.

And that sucks.

Because the fact is, no one gets a damn thing from Bones without first earning his respect. Jim’s only spent a few moments in Jocelyn’s presence, but he knows exactly what’s she got – the poise, the purpose, the pedigree. She’s somebody.

And, for right now at least, Jim is nobody.

Which is why it’s kind of weird when, less than a month after the ball, a pair of well trained assassins shows up and tries to kill him.

And since when does Bones run around Jim’s house in the middle of the night carrying a phaser?


	2. Chapter 2

Elena Trenton doesn’t sleep.

Not really.

She _does_ retire to her room at night after Jim has gone to bed, but she uses this time to watch Terran newsfeeds and read the private, anonymous correspondence from various Empire sources for which she has paid a premium for the last eighteen years. She also uses the time to draft her own anonymous correspondence, for which she typically earns back at least as much as she’s invested. (But it’s not about profit.) 

Sometimes, in the wee small hours of the morning, she _will_ lie down on her own bed, resting her eyes for a bit and granting herself the small indulgences of memories and masturbation.

Occasionally, she dozes.

And every morning, before Jim wakes, she spends at least an hour, usually two, in restorative meditation, reviving her mind and body without sacrificing her conscious awareness. 

But she doesn’t really sleep.

Sleep is for the weak, the comfortable and the unimportant.

Elena Trenton is none of these.

Winona Kirk used to sleep. 

Not easily, perhaps, but often and well enough. Most of the time, there was a certain comfort to her position as wife of the Kirk heir. For most people, she was too important to kill with impunity but not important enough to make it worth the risk of punishment.

Of course, she never dared sleep while staying at the Kirk estates, where any number of family members would as soon poison her as look at her. And while at court, like any smart couple, she and George tended to take turns. But on the _Kelvin_ , in their quarters, it wasn’t entirely stupid to fall into a solid, if light, slumber.

Even if she did keep a phaser under her pillow.

Winona Alexander, though, she slept well.

You wouldn’t have known it to look at her. In her waking hours, she practically vibrated with unspent energy. The people around grew tired just watching the way she constantly studied her surroundings – memorizing, analyzing, theorizing – visibly restless in her ambition. 

But at night she slept the pure, sound sleep of the unimportant, the unnoticed, the underestimated.

The way Jim sleeps even now, just down the hall.

And maybe she should have appreciated it at the time, but she didn’t.

Winona Alexander had gladly sacrificed some of that peace of mind the day she convinced George Kirk to marry her.

And Winona Kirk had not-so-gladly lost the rest of it seven years later, on the day he died.

Now, eighteen years later, Elena Trenton may not sleep, but she still keeps a phaser under her pillow, and the instant she hears the soft sound downstairs, it’s there in her hand.

A whisper of a footstep on the stairs and it’s fully armed, set to stun as she crosses her room with silent steps and waits, back to the wall next to the door. She listens as the footsteps reach the top and turn toward Jim’s door. She lets the intruder take a couple more steps, then slips into the hallway as quickly and quietly as she can, hoping to catch him or her by surprise.

Elena is more than willing to shoot someone in the back to protect her plans, her future, her son. She’s been waiting eighteen years for this day and even if she’d started to believe, to hope it would never come, she’s never stopped being ready for it.

Of course, the bodies of Winona Kirk and George Kirk’s newborn son weren’t the only ones never to be recovered from the wreckage of the _Kelvin_ , but both the Kirks and the Kirks’ enemies have always been exceptionally thorough. 

And they have never liked Winona.

The soft sound of her bedroom door gives her away and by the time she’s in position to fire, the intruder has turned to face her, his own phaser at the ready.

Winona Kirk and Leonard McCoy look each other in the eye.

Neither of them fires.

Winona studies McCoy for one long, slow second and she knows that he knows.

“We have to get him out of here,” McCoy says, voice low and urgent. “They’re right behind me.”

Winona wants to ask McCoy what he’s doing here and _who_ is right behind him, but she can already hear them downstairs, coming through the back door. She gives McCoy another half-second’s appraisal and decides to trust him with her son’s life.

“How many?” she asks.

“Two, I think.” He gestures toward Jim’s door. “You wake him up, I’ll—”

But McCoy doesn’t have time to finish his sentence before that door opens. Jim steps through, fully dressed, phaser in hand, looking from his mother to McCoy and back again.

“What the hell is going—?”

He’s cut off by the sound of phaser fire. They all duck instinctively, and the beam scorches the wall over their heads.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” McCoy shouts.

Winona nods and waves him forward, standing to provide covering fire as McCoy starts down the stairs, Jim following close behind.

Once McCoy and Jim make it to the first floor and duck around the corner toward the kitchen, the shooters lose interest in Winona’s position. She sees them break off in opposite directions, clearly intending to surround the boys. She hurries after them, breaking left at the bottom of the stairs. 

She hears more shots fired.

She rounds the corner just in time to watch one of Jim’s shots hit home, striking one of the two men square in the chest, and her own chest swells with pride and satisfaction.

She remembers driving out to the dessert, steadying his five-year-old arm as she taught him to aim and fire, first at rocks on the hillside, then at mechanized targets darting across the ground or through the air. It was a game then, and Jim shouted and laughed with each success, pouted with every failure. She sees it still in his eyes, even from across the room – that same urge to gloat and crow – but he holds it back, keeps his focus, lips quirking only briefly into the barest of smirks. 

Her son is a boy no longer. 

He’s every bit the man she trained him to be, and so much more besides. You can’t teach those sorts of instincts. He’s always been a natural.

Jim and McCoy have spotted her, and McCoy moves slowly away from Jim, inching toward the back door.

The way looks clear.

They just might make it out.

She’ll have to tell Jim the truth now, of course. About the family that couldn’t wait to get rid of her but would have whisked him away in a heartbeat. And maybe she was wrong to think it could wait until they’d landed on Terra, installed him in the Fleet Academy, but she knows well that the only secrets ever kept in the Empire are the ones never told.

Still, he’s eighteen already, even if he doesn’t know it, and his share of the Kirk fortune, the Kirk resources, the Kirk _power_ is his to claim.

His to claim and to command and to share with his dear and devoted mother, whether old Tiberius wishes it or not. 

Personally, she hopes the old man keels over from the shock and dies of impotent outrage.

Winona smiles softly and is beginning to move towards Jim when she spots the second assassin out of the corner of her eye, stepping out from a doorway and into a clear line of sight. Jim is looking the other way, McCoy doesn’t have the angle, and the assassin’s arm is already lifting to take the shot.

There’s nothing else she can do.

The world slows to a crawl and Winona’s limbs feel like they’re moving through plasma as she throws her body in front of her son’s.

She lands in Jim’s arms, vaguely registers the next shot, which flies over her in the direction of the assassin. 

_McCoy_ , she thinks, and knows she’s made the right choice.

They’re on the floor and she’s lying across Jim’s lap and he’s looking down at her.

“…be okay,” he’s saying. “We got them. Just hold on. Bones is gonna…”

But Winona knows McCoy isn’t going to do anything. The shot hit her square in the left shoulder, too far from her heart to kill her instantly, but close enough that she can’t survive.

It’s not the past that flashes before her eyes, but the future she’d planned, receding rapidly, slipping further and further from her vision. Jim will live that future without her now, and somehow the thought doesn’t bother her nearly as much as she thought it would.

The only thing she truly regrets is that she won’t see the look on the old man’s face when he finally lays eyes on Jim.

Or the one when he realizes, once and for all, that Jim is and will always be hers, never his.

She musters the last of her strength and reaches up to stroke her son’s strong, firm jaw. 

She forces her lips to form their final words. “James. Tiberius. Kirk.” 

The lights go out.

 

***

“She’s dead, Jim. I’m sorry.”

Jim looks down at his mother’s face. She looks calm, almost peaceful, and it feels wrong. Elena Trenton isn’t peaceful. She’s driven and exacting, restless but focused. 

She’s a hundred other things that Jim admires and aspires to be, but she’s not peaceful.

Then again, she’s not Elena Trenton.

“We have to get out of here, kid. Now.”

Jim nods. He knows that Bones is right. 

What he doesn’t know is how to unclench the fingers pressed against his mother’s flesh. He doesn’t know how to push her off his lap and stand up, how to walk away.

In the end, it’s Bones that does it, drawing Jim’s mother – Winona Kirk – from Jim’s arms and laying her gently on the ground.

Winona Kirk.

Wife of George Kirk, first son of one of the most powerful families in the Empire and Imperial hero in his own right.

Mother of James Tiberius Kirk, the would-be heir presumed dead on the very day of his birth.

Jim sees the whole of the thing in an instant. He lacks the fine details, but he understands her plan. He reaches out and takes the phaser from her hand, gently removes the knife tucked away at the small of her back and slides it into his own boot.

James Tiberius Kirk lifts himself up off the floor and turns to look at Bones. “Let’s go,” he says.

 

They take Jim’s bike, slipping swiftly through silent streets until they reach the shuttleport. They forgo conspicuous passenger transport – there’s nothing leaving until the morning anyway – and talk their way onto a small and disreputable trade vessel just on the verge of departure. 

As far as desirable hitchhikers go, ‘doctor’ seems to rank higher than ‘pretty boy who claims to be handy with engines.’ When Bones makes it clear that he’s not coming on board unless Jim comes with him, the merchant captain relents with a knowing leer, slapping Bones on the back before showing the two of them to a small cabin with just one bed.

Jim plays right along, walking too close to Bones, touching him too often, slipping him a serving of sultry smiles with a side of bedroom eyes. No one thinks twice about a pretty, young bed warmer, and if there’s one lesson his mother worked hardest to instill, it’s the myriad advantages of being underestimated.

Bones sighs and rolls his eyes, but does nothing to correct the captain’s assumptions about their relationship.

The captain leaves them in the cabin, promising they’ll be pulling out of spacedock in a matter of minutes, and Jim and Bones wait without moving or speaking until they feel the slight shift and shudder that indicate a successful departure.

Letting go of a breath he didn’t realize he was holding, Jim sits the only place there is to sit – on the edge of the bed. After a moment, Bones sits next to him, reaching out.

“C’mere, kid,” he says. “Lemme check you for injuries.”

Jim smirks. “Is that what they’re calling it these days?”

“Very funny,” Bones huffs. “I’m serious.”

“I’m fine.”

“You let me be the judge of that,” Bones says, first catching Jim by the shoulders and turning him, then gripping Jim’s head and using his thumbs to hold Jim’s right eye open as he peers into it.

“I think I’d know if there was something wrong,” Jim mutters.

“You’re hopped up on adrenaline,” Bones retorts, gazing into the other eye. “You could have any number of—”

Whatever doomsday scenario Bones is about to spin is lost forever when Jim, deciding turnabout is fair play, reaches up and grabs Bones’ own head in both his hands.

Jim opts to perform an exam of a distinctly more oral nature.

As he’s shoving his tongue down Bones’ throat, it occurs to Jim that he _may_ be a _little_ hopped up on adrenaline. But then Bones is kissing Jim back and then shoving him back onto the bed and Jim ceases to give a shit.

The kiss is painful, but awesome, all bruising pressure and clashing teeth, and just when Jim’s pretty sure he’s tasting his own blood, Bones pulls back to ruck up Jim’s shirt, yanking it off over Jim’s head and practically dislocating Jim’s shoulder in the process.

Arms free, Jim skips Bones’ shirt altogether and goes straight for Bones’ fly, tugging and fumbling until he manages to make enough room to shove his hand down the front of Bones’ pants. They’re kissing again – or something like it – and Bones practically bites through Jim’s bottom lip as Jim finally curves his palm around Bones’ cock and gives it a good squeeze.

Whether through superior expertise or a superior angle, Bones gets his own hand into Jim’s pants much more quickly, pressing himself down into Jim’s palm as Jim bucks up into his. They abandon the kissing altogether in favor of indiscriminate licking and biting, as they rub and thrust into each other’s hands, careening toward orgasm.

Release comes – Jim first, Bones less than a minute later –and then goes, taking the adrenaline and endorphins with it. 

Bones rolls off of Jim before passing out, but he doesn’t have far he can go. They drift and doze side by side for maybe an hour, maybe two, before Jim snaps back to full consciousness with a sudden realization. Moving swiftly but softly, he manages to get his mother’s knife out of his boot and pressed against Bones’ throat before Bones so much as stirs.

“How did you know they were coming after me?” he asks, pushing the cool flat of the blade harder into Bones’ flesh.

“Huh?” Bones asks, blinking, trying to pretend he’s still only half awake.

As if Jim can’t hear the furious beating of his heart.

“Don’t fuck with me,” Jim says. “Who do you work for?”

“No one,” Bones says. “Jesus, kid. What’re you – pissed I didn’t want to cuddle after?”

“You were in my house. In the middle of the night. Either you were fucking my mom or you knew they were coming.” Jim isn’t sure which of the two would piss him off more.

“Your mother called me.” 

Jim growls and presses the blade even closer, about to break skin. 

“Not like _that_ ,” Bones hastens to add. “She told me she thought something was about to go down, asked me to come over.”

Jim snorts. “She heard some people might be coming to kill us, so she just decided to call up good old Doctor McCoy from the clinic down the road? Figured – what? Might be good to have you on hand to tag the bodies afterwards?”

Before Jim can blink, Bones’ hand darts up and closes over Jim’s own, pushing the knife away from his throat with a surprising amount of strength. “In case you haven’t noticed,” Bones says, “I’m not exactly useless in a fight.” 

Jim pushes back and they’re deadlocked. “So my mother heard about your secret combat skills and thought you sounded like the one to call at the first sign of danger? And you, of course, rushed to her rescue?”

Bones takes in a deep breath and sighs in resignation. “Your mother first approached me over a year ago,” he admits. “You’d been spending a lot of time at the clinic. At first I think she just wanted to make sure I wasn’t doing anything…she wouldn’t approve of. But I guess once she’d checked me out and decided I was alright, she figured it might be useful to have a second pair of eyes watching out for you. She asked me to help. I agreed.”

Jim eases his grip on the knife, just a bit. Bones eases his own in turn.

“So all this time, you’ve known who I am?” The thought of it irks Jim. It’s irksome. 

Bones shakes his head. “Sorry, kid, I don’t have a clue what supposedly makes you so fucking special. She only told me there were some people who might want to get rid of you or take you away. She wouldn’t say who or why.”

“And you just figured, ‘Hey, sounds cryptic, but why not? Nothing better to do!’?” Jim asks, skeptical. “Oh, or maybe you just really wanted to help. You know, out of the kindness of your heart.”

Bones glares at him. “I _figured_ asking too many questions is a recipe for trouble. And that your mother seemed like the kind of person I wouldn’t mind having owe me a favor or two.”

Jim sits back, pulling the knife back with him. Bones releases his hand. Jim studies Bones for a long moment, then smirks. “Guess that didn’t work out so well for you, then. All that time you put in and no return on your investment.”

Bones shrugs. “I’ll live.”

Jim frowns as another thought suddenly occurs to him. “What about your wife? She know you just left her behind on a colony she despises so you could escort a kid who might not even be that important to Terra as a favor to a woman who’s not in a position to owe you anything?”

The question seems to give Bones pause. “Joce and I…” he says, at last, “we had a parting of the ways.” 

The answer fills Jim with a fierce satisfaction. He looks Bones over again, more of a full body sweep this time. He sets the knife aside. 

“Of course,” he says slowly, lifting one knee and swinging it up and over so he’s straddling Bones’ hips, “there may be a favor or two _I_ could offer you…” He reaches for the hem of Bones’ shirt. “You know, just to even the score.”

Bones meets Jim’s eyes and then begins to runs a slow, firm hand up each of Jim’s thighs. “Fair’s fair,” he says.

Jim pounces.

 

By the time they both get off again, it’s morning. 

Bones heads down the corridor to use the head and grab a quick sonic before reporting to the captain, ready to earn his passage by tending to the crew’s injuries and ailments.

Jim spends the early part of the day palling around with the crew and quietly assessing their assets and vulnerabilities. After lunch, he retires to the cabin with a borrowed PADD and begins researching the Kirks and the destruction of the _I.S.S. Kelvin_.

Jim is propped up on the bed, still reading, when Bones gets back from his day of doctoring. He yawns as he strips off his shirt and sits heavily on the side of the bed. Jim takes one long look at that tantalizing expanse of broad, bare back and tosses his PADD aside.

The adrenaline is long gone this third time around and it’s not like it’s all slow and tender or anything, but it’s a hell of a lot less frantic. There’s time to notice things.

Things like Bones’ big, beautiful cock.

And once Jim finally gets a good eyeful, a thought creeps into his brain. A curiosity, really. 

_Trivial_ , it says. 

_Harmless_ , it insists.

But Jim knows better and does his best to quash it.

It’s in there, though. And it just won’t leave him alone.

 

Bazelis flies swarm around Jim, biting him through his clothes like the bloodthirsty motherfuckers they are. He slaps at them, scratching at the welts that swell on his skin.

He hates Castius VI at the best of times.

During Bazelis season, he _loathes_ it.

He never should have left the city. The desert is _their_ land and now he is their prey. They’ll eat him alive.

Somehow, his left forearm has gotten the worst of it. It itches and burns and stings. He scratches, _claws_ at the skin – pushing so hard, digging so deep that he must be drawing blood – and still it goes on. He falls to the ground as they buzz and swarm overhead. He twists and thrashes on the rough, dry earth, desperate for relief.

Suddenly something tightens around both his shoulders, pressing him down, pinning him. He struggles and bucks until the voice breaks through.

“Jim! Christ, kid, wake up!”

Jim’s eyes snap open and the flies are gone. 

So is the desert, and Castius VI.

It’s Bones hovering over him, now, and it’s a bed beneath his back, but goddamn it, his left fucking forearm still itches like a son of a bitch. His right hand reaches across his body, desperate to scratch, but Bones catches it and holds it.

Jim kicks and squirms, trying to get free.

He _needs_ to scratch.

“Damn it, Jim,” Bones mutters, “hold still for a second, will you? I need to look at this.”

“Fuck that,” Jim says, still struggling. “I need to scratch.”

“Don’t make me sedate you,” Bones warns.

“Don’t you fucking try,” Jim snaps, but he does stop fighting for a second.

Bones eases off in turn and Jim scoots up into a sitting position.

“Lights,” Bones orders, and as the cabin brightens, they both stare down at Jim’s red and swollen forearm. Bones takes hold of Jim’s wrist, turning it to see the inside of the arm, which reveals a raised, red patch of skin in the shape of a small, almost perfect square.

“It’s a chip,” they realize at the same time.

Jim presses his own thumb to the swollen skin, looking Bones in the eye.

“Cut it out of me,” he says.

 

It’s a little difficult to go back to sleep after someone’s cut a data chip out of your arm with a laser scalpel under what said person crankily described as ‘appallingly unsterile conditions.’ Especially when the chip in question is now sitting on your nightstand, your flesh and blood sonically stripped from its surface, leaving it ready and waiting. It’s all Jim can do not to leap out of bed, grab the PADD off the table, and shove the chip inside.

But he’s not about to do it while Bones is still in the room.

Can’t sleep, can’t look at the chip. More sex, Jim decides, is the natural solution.

Bones does not disagree.

The distraction is good.

Great, even.

Until that nagging curiosity creeps back in.

Even after he comes, Jim is left unsatisfied.

 

As soon as Bones leaves the room the next morning, Jim snatches up the PADD and loads the chip. His mother’s face appears on the screen and Jim feels something catch in his chest. 

_“Hello, Jim.”_

Her voice makes his heart race.

For a long moment, she looks out at him with the same focus and intensity that marked nearly all their interactions since Jim can remember. Then, improbably, she cracks a small smile. 

_“It’s terribly cliché, I’m afraid, but it has to be said.”_ She heaves a short, but dramatic sigh. _“If you’re seeing this, it means I’m dead.”_

For the next ten hours, Jim watches and listens and reads as his mother lays everything out before him. She tells him her own story and his father’s story. She details the history of the Kirk family. The family that would not have considered Winona a Kirk after their precious George’s death (if they’d ever considered her one at all). 

She describes how she escaped with him and her plans for him and the things she put in place. 

The contents of the chip aren’t limited to narratives, either. They include classified Empire documents suitable for manipulation and career advancement. There are also copies of countless private communications tailor made for blackmail. There are even illustrated instructions for a meditation technique that virtually eliminates the need for sleep – one which was lost to (the rest of) the universe when the _Kelvin_ wiped out the entire population of the planet Ronke. 

Finally, Jim reaches the last of the recordings. As it begins, the pieces start to fall into place.

 _“…I’m not saying that everything I did, every lie I told, was just for you,”_ Winona says at the end of it. She snorts softly and there’s that smile again. _“But you’re too smart to believe that, anyway.”_ Her face turns serious, her eyes fierce. _“You’re also too smart not to realize that, no matter my motives, I still did what was best for you. Yes, I needed security and, yes, I craved revenge. I wasn’t about to let Tiberius Kirk take away everything I worked for. But all I ever really did was to make you the man your father and I always knew you could be. He never got the chance to give you more than the Kirk name, but I’ve given you everything else I could. The rest is up to you, Jimmy. Choose wisely and the Empire is yours.”_

After that, the screen goes dark. 

Jim sets the PADD down on the table and sits on the edge of the bed. He feels the weight of it all slowly settling onto his shoulders.

Jim Trenton, for all his talents, had nowhere to go but up. And Jim Trenton, for all his ambition, could only have risen so far. 

But Jim Trenton is gone. 

Jim Kirk can have everything, but he’s still going to have to fight for it. And Jim Kirk has everything to lose.

 

Two hours later, Jim’s future isn’t the only thing weighing him down. 

But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Because for a man who works mostly with his hands and brain, Bones has one hell of a solid body, and Jim may not be admitting it any time soon, but he loves the way he feels trapped between that body and the mattress. 

Okay, so it’s kind of a bad thing.

Because Jim wants more.

Only Jim _Kirk_ is not the kind of guy who can just go around asking to be fucked.

In the Empire, it’s one thing to let yourself be fucked by your superiors. Hell, if it gets you promoted, it’s even okay to pretend you like it.

And it’s not like you have much of a choice.

To actually want it, though?

To _ask_ for it?

That’s a whole other thing. Especially from some no-name doctor unfortunate enough to be stationed out on Castius VI.

Jim Trenton might have gotten away with it. Might have traded his ass for an opportunity to get an unnoticed, but highly skilled physician into his pocket – someone unthreatening who could keep Jim in one piece while he navigated the Academy, building the skills and contacts he’d need to become powerful enough to make sure that, at the end of the day, he was the one doing all the fucking.

In Jim Trenton, it would have been a strategy.

In Jim Kirk, it’s a weakness.

Bones is rubbing their bodies together, biting at Jim’s neck. He reaches down between them to slide his palm over Jim’s dick, getting ready to jerk him to orgasm. It’s their usual thing – some (rough) kissing, biting, maybe a little nipple stimulation, lots of frottage, mutual hand jobs – basically the standard menu of sexual acts available to two men between whom neither has established dominance.

Safe.

Undefined.

Non-committal. 

Jim lets his legs slide open just a bit.

Bones’ hand pauses mid-stroke. After a moment, it ventures a little lower, cupping and squeezing Jim’s balls with just enough pressure to walk the line between pleasure and pain.

Jim grunts and shivers.

Bones’ fingers slide down to press firmly against Jim’s perineum.

Jim shudders and moans.

 _Fuck it_ , he decides. Jim _Trenton_ died the night they left Castius VI, but he’s got the rest of his life to be Jim _Kirk_. The instant he sets foot on Terra, the party’ll be over, but for right now – for this next week or two – he can just be _Jim_. 

_Jim_ lets his legs fall open wide.

That’s all the invitation Bones needs.

 

The first vessel drops them at a trading outpost in Sector 9 where Bones finds them space on a supply ship heading for Terra. Jim is only too happy to play the hot young concubine, hovering at Bones’ side as he makes the arrangements with the first officer, teasing him with light touches and hot looks. 

They’re shown to their new cabin, and Bones all but throws Jim into the room.

“Brat,” Bones growls, pulling off his shirt as he edges Jim toward the bed with his body.

Jim laughs, tearing off his own shirt, even as he ducks away from Bones’ hands. Bones lunges for Jim, but Jim darts to the side, eluding capture.

He may be giving it up to Bones, but that doesn’t mean he can’t – and won’t – make Bones work for it.

A minute later, he allows himself to be caught and flung onto the bed face down. Bones lands on top of him a few seconds after that, rubbing his already hard cock against Jim’s ass as he circles Jim’s wrists with his hands and pins them to the mattress.

Jim squirms obligingly and laughs again at Bones’ desperate groan. Jim continues his playful struggles as Bones fights to tug Jim’s pants down over Jim’s hips. When they finally come free, Bones forces Jim’s legs wide and uses his knees to pin them in place while he shoves two lubed fingers into Jim, just fast and deep enough to hurt in the best possible way.

Bones preps Jim enough to ease the way for his own cock, but not enough to save Jim from the burn or the ache that will follow.

It’s fucking perfect.

Noise embarrasses Bones, so Jim makes as much as he can as Bones pounds into him, prompting Bones to take his hand off Jim’s dick and clamp it over Jim’s mouth. Jim’s so close he doesn’t need the hand anyway. 

He bites down on Bones’ palm as he comes.

 

Jim may not be acting like Jim Kirk, but he’s still thinking like him, making his plans for their arrival on Terra. Mostly, Jim knows that he doesn’t know enough yet to make his real plans. 

He won’t be announcing his existence to the Kirks or to anyone just yet, that’s for sure, so he’ll need to find a place to hunker down for a little while. Somewhere close enough to spy on the Kirk family and gather information, but not so close or so obvious as to risk discovery.

They’ve never talked about it, but he thinks maybe he’ll take Bones with him. As far as Jim can tell, it’s not like Bones will have anywhere else to go, and hiding out or no, there are worse people to keep around than a good doctor.

 

Jim is the first to step off the shuttle in San Francisco. Bones follows after, hovering in a nervous, alert sort of way that makes Jim want to smile. It’s cute that Bones still thinks Jim needs protection.

“So, I was thinking…” Jim begins, glancing over at Bones and offering a winning smile. “I mean, if you don’t have anywhere else to—”

He breaks off abruptly as four men emerge from the crowd around them, moving in with clear intent. Jim automatically turns his back to Bones, ready to face the threat together, but realizes an instant later that Bones isn’t doing the same.

In fact, Bones has stepped back to make way for the men, who now have Jim well and truly surrounded. Jim is about to lash out and attempt to make a run for it when an old man appears in front of him.

Jim immediately recognizes the face.

Tiberius Kirk.

“Welcome to Terra, James,” he says, voice low and calm. “I was hoping you’d join us at the family estate. I have a shuttle waiting.”

Jim opens his mouth, ready to refuse, but Tiberius doesn’t leave room for the rejection. 

“Let’s not make a scene, shall we?” he continues, cool and firm. “I have more than these four men here, but it will be embarrassing for all of us if you make them necessary.” 

Jim glances around the shuttleport and knows without a doubt that Tiberius isn’t bluffing. He nods once, then looks over his shoulder to find Bones.

Bones, who isn’t meeting Jim’s eyes. 

Bones, who’s looking straight at Tiberius instead.

Tiberius, who’s looking back and nodding.

“Good work, Doctor McCoy,” he’s saying. “Jocelyn, I’m afraid, is dead, but your loyalty will not go unrewarded.”

 

**_Bonus art by_[spikeface](/users/spikeface/pseuds/spikeface) **  



	3. Chapter 3

In the small town where L.H. McCoy is born and raised, people don’t put much stock in the Empire. Oh, they wouldn’t dream of bringing trouble down on the community by saying so in public, but in the privacy of their own kitchens, among friends, they rarely hesitate to make their feelings known.

And those feelings are rarely good.

When L.H. is four years old, he wanders into his kitchen looking for some juice and overhears Miss Cherie complaining to his mama.

“Well, I was _fixin’_ to bake _my_ pies tomorrow,” Miss Cherie says, sipping on the kind of drink his mama never lets him try, “but it seems Her Imperial Majesty has developed a sudden fondness for pecans and needs every last one sent to the palace immediately. I hear they’re down to a _mere_ three storerooms full, and you know that that just _will not do_.”

“Of course not,” Eleanor McCoy agrees in a tone L.H. can already identify as sarcasm. “God forbid a _single one_ of His Imperial Majesty’s honored guests go without a fresh pecan tart at any meal.” She sighs and rolls her eyes as she rolls out the dough for the crust of her own peach pie. “I suppose it will be peaches next. I told Millicent Morgan that her crop was just too good this year, but did she listen?”

“Does she ever?” Miss Cherie agrees, clucking. “If I were her, I’d have half a mind to pick a few baskets for myself and burn the rest of the orchard to the ground.”

L.H. feels his ears burning at the blasphemy of that statement, but his mama only laughs.

He decides to go play up in his room.

Of course, L.H. can’t help but notice how Miss Cherie still brings pecan pies to the fair that weekend and how, even though she swears up and down they were made from replicated pecans, they sure as heck don’t taste like it.

 

 

Still, L.H. doesn’t think too much about these things until the next year, when he goes off to school. At school, the teachers talk about the Empire all the time, but it’s not like in his mama’s kitchen. The teachers are always from elsewhere and, demonstrating in flat, Yankee vowels, they teach the students to recite a pledge of allegiance and to sing patriotic songs. They talk about the noble history of the royal family and about the bravery of its most loyal subjects.

On Fridays, they even show holovids about the adventures of the Imperial Fleet. L.H. and his friends watch in awe as dashing men in bright sashes protect Terra from all manner of strange and hostile races, each bent on destroying humanity, but all far too stupid to pull it off in the end.

One Friday, about halfway through the school year, L.H. marches straight home and straight into the kitchen and tells his mama point blank: “You shouldn’t say bad things about the Empire, Mama. It’s not right.”

“Isn’t it, now?” Eleanor asks, snorting softly. “And what has the Empire ever done for me? Or you, for that matter?”

L.H. thinks hard about the things he’s learned. “The Empire keeps us from getting attacked by the bad aliens,” he says, after a moment. “And they make sure everybody has a job to do, the thing that the person is best at. And they make sure we all have stuff to eat and drink.”

“They tell us what to do, take what they want, and then expect us to be grateful when – or if – they leave us the rest,” she corrects, taking a harsher tone with him than she ever has before. “You listen to me, L.H. Truth is, _we’re_ the ones making sure _they_ have food on their royal tables and _they’re_ the only ones we’ve ever had to be afraid of.”

L.H. doesn’t quite know what to make of this, but he retreats to his room and doesn’t bring it up again for a long while.

 

 

 

L.H.’s favorite Empire holovids are the ones with the medics, who perform often brutal but always beautiful acts in the heat and the aftermath of battle. L.H. doesn’t know why the other kids don’t see it, but these medics, they’re more powerful than the captains. No fight, no alien engagement is without casualties, and it’s the medics that hold the captain’s – the entire crew’s – life in their highly trained hands.

Life is theirs to save or destroy.

If they’re good enough.

Of course, L.H. knows his daddy is a doctor – “Just an old country doctor,” his daddy likes to say – but L.H. doesn’t really connect what his daddy does to those scenes in the holovids until he’s seven years old, the day the Deputy Imperial Minister of Youth and Sport comes through town.

The schools have organized all the children to march in a parade in the deputy minister’s honor and the local colonial functionaries have made it clear to the adult portion of the population that it’s in their best interests to show up on the sidelines and cheer their children (and the deputy minister) on.

In the end, most of the town is, if not enthusiastic, at least in attendance.

Nevertheless, the terrorist attack is, if very public, at least quite targeted.

None of the locals – adult or child – get seriously injured.

The same cannot be said for the deputy minister.

Or the man who was wearing the bomb.

No one close enough to see the charge go off expects the minister or his bodyguards to live, and L.H. and his classmates were close enough to see the charge go off. So when David McCoy quietly steps in to save the day – and the deputy minister’s life (not to mention those of several of his entourage) – L.H. starts to see his daddy in a whole new light.

And L.H. isn’t the only one.

 

 

Lucky for the town, Imperial investigators determine that the terrorist responsible for the attack came from elsewhere and acted without local accomplices. Still, the man who martyred himself to the anti-imperialist cause becomes something of a local hero and certain members of the community make it known that they think Dr. David McCoy could have tried a little less hard to heal the deputy minister.

As if this weren’t hard enough for a man who has always prided himself on his personal relationships with his patients, after a few months, the ‘special’ patients start trickling into David McCoy’s office. The Old American South has never been the most hospitable region for Imperial functionaries, and now that they’ve discovered an exceptionally capable doctor who seems disinclined to let _anyone_ die on his table, the Empire has taken to sending him any and all emergency cases in a three state radius.

This does nothing for David McCoy’s popularity around town.

And even less for his stress levels.

But L.H. begins to reap some benefits.

It’s not that he doesn’t earn his grades or his position at the top of his class – L.H. has always been smarter than most of his friends – but all the one-on-one attention he starts to receive in class doesn’t hurt either.

Well, except in the friends department.

But with fewer people taking up his time, L.H. is free to study ahead, complete special extra credit assignments. When he’s twelve, he gets invited to an exclusive middle school forty miles from town, all expenses paid.

They call it a scholarship.

L.H. wants this school more than anything and says so.

He watches his parents look the other way.

The school is everything L.H. dreamed it would be and more. Two years later (though it was supposed to take three), L.H. is invited to an even more exclusive high school, the Southern Science Academy, an Imperial boarding school in Atlanta.

They’re still calling it a scholarship.

L.H. doesn’t have any friends in town anymore. Doesn’t have anything but his burning desire to be the best. Didn’t even know it was possible to want something as much as this opportunity.

This time, though, his parents _try_ to put their foot down.

L.H. pleads and then he begs. When that doesn’t work, he runs away from home.

 

 

“Mr. McCoy, a moment please.”

L.H. stops in front of the head lab table and waits as the rest of the students exit the classroom.

“I’ve been watching you, Mr. McCoy,” Mr. Nuckels begins, when the room is finally empty. “You’re an ambitious young man, and quite talented as well.” Careful not to look too cocky or too demure, L.H. gives a slight nod in acknowledgment of the praise. “What would you say if I told you you could be practicing medicine by your twenty-first birthday?”

L.H.’s glance flickers across the lab table, taking in the lecherous gaze of his organic chemistry teacher. He looks down but speaks clearly. “I’d be very interested, sir.”

Mr. Nuckels smiles slowly. “There’s a medical program down at Ole Miss that accepts students – a few students – straight out of secondary academies like this one. Top notch medical training from day one and none of that other shit to get in the way. The Empire has been quite pleased with the results so far. It sounds to me like just the sort of thing a boy like you might be looking for.”

L.H. nods. “Yes, sir.”

Mr. Nuckels nods back, looking thoughtful. “Yes,” he says, “I think it would be an excellent fit. Of course, even the most talented among us needs a bit of assistance from time to time.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The program is quite…competitive, but I do have a friend or two in the admissions office. Under certain circumstances, I might be persuaded to put in a good word.” The man is practically salivating now. L.H. ignores the way it makes his stomach turn. “Do you understand what I’m telling you, Mr. McCoy?”

“Yes, sir.”

L.H. understands perfectly.

Mr. Nuckels isn’t the first teacher at the academy to extend an offer to ‘help’ L.H. He’s just the first one whose offer is actually worthwhile. The others, having heard where L.H. came from and that he and his parents were recently estranged, tried to imply that L.H.’s place at the academy was tenuous at best and purported to offer security. L.H. never dared to laugh at these teachers, but he always turned them down flat.

L.H. isn’t stupid. He knows how things work.

He may not be talking to his parents, but he knows that, if his tuition’s still getting paid, then his daddy is still accepting ‘special’ patients, whether his mama realizes it or not.

He knows that he’ll be able to stay at the academy as long as he likes.

The only problem is: he’s already bored.

The chance to go to medical school next year? At age seventeen? Just the thought of it is beginning to burn a hole in his chest.

He looks up at Mr. Nuckels again, sees the way the man’s hips press tight against the edge of the table as he speaks with strained equanimity.

“I’ll see you in my office this evening, then? After dinner?”

L.H. forces himself to meet the man’s eyes at last. “Yes, sir.”

 

 

L.H. isn’t stupid. He knows how things work.

Except when he totally doesn’t.

Parties, for example, elude him.

He stands in a corner, holding his glass of bourbon in front of him like a shield and watches all the other people in the room mix and mingle, chattering and laughing with each other like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

As for L.H., he’s pretty sure that jabbing a stylus through his ear canal would feel more _natural_ to him than making small talk. If you don’t have anything interesting to say, L.H. doesn’t see much point in speaking at all. Not only is it a waste of time and energy, but somehow, in L.H.’s case, it has an uncanny tendency to end in abject humiliation.

Or, possibly even worse, not to end at all.

Last party he went to, L.H. ended up stuck in a utility room for over an hour, listening to some guy whine about his ex-girlfriend, who was out in the actual party, apparently smiling and laughing and having a wonderful time with more than one new suitor.

In the end, L.H. couldn’t decide which was more pathetic: being that guy or being the guy who couldn’t find anyone better than that guy to talk to.

Still, he keeps coming back for more.

He does it because it’s what he’s supposed to do. This is where things happen. Where connections are made, where careers are built.

The simple social economy of the Southern Science Academy was never very difficult to navigate. Back then, L.H. just focused on doing his work and keeping his head down and when someone wanted something from him, they told him, and he decided whether he had to give it to them or not.

Being a teacher’s pet in his last year had made things even simpler.

That and putting in at least ten hours a week at the school gym.

Ole Miss, though, is complicated.

Suddenly, being at the top of his class doesn’t seem to be enough to get L.H. any special attention, and his father’s connections don’t seem to count for much anymore. He knows that the people around him (in class, on campus, at this fucking party) must want something, but L.H. is damned if he has any idea what it is.

He looks up and notices that one of the smaller balconies is empty. He makes a beeline for it, escaping into the cool, fresh night air. He lets out a long, rather loud, sigh of relief, only to realize, half a second later, that the balcony isn’t so empty after all.

Its other occupant turns to look at him and L.H. feels a flush creeping up his cheeks.

She’s beautiful. Bright blue eyes, thick, wavy auburn hair pulled casually away from her face to reveal her perfect skin and aristocratic cheekbones. He darts a glance lower and catches sight of her killer curves.

“Hi,” she says, lifting her arm to take a drag off the long, thin cigarette he’s just now noticing in her perfectly manicured hand.

L.H. opens his mouth to introduce himself or maybe to tell her that she’s a goddess. “Those things will kill you,” he says instead.

Hearing his own words, L.H. resists the urge to clamp a hand over his stupid, treacherous mouth.

 _Fuck_.

The woman laughs, little puffs of smoke passing from her lips and drifting away into the night. “If someone else doesn’t kill me first,” she says, “then I obviously won’t have been trying hard enough.”

L.H. isn’t sure what to say to that, so he just stands there, feeling about as awkward and useless as he probably looks. When she tilts her head and eyes him like he’s some sort of foreign and mysterious object, it occurs to L.H. that he was probably supposed to laugh.

It seems too late now.

The woman laughs again instead. “What’re you doing here?” she asks. “I thought this was a med school party.”

“I’m a med student,” L.H. says.

The woman looks him over again, taking another drag of her cigarette. “Are you sure? You look like a freshman.”

“I’m at the top of my class,” L.H. says. He hears how defensive he sounds and hates himself for it.

The woman raises an eyebrow. “Well, then. I stand corrected.” She turns away from him again, leaning on the balcony railing and looking out at the moonlit skyline as she finishes her cigarette.

At this point, L.H. isn’t sure whether it’s more awkward to leave or to stay.

He’s just finally decided on leaving when the woman reaches into her handbag and pulls out an antique silver cigarette case. She snaps it open and withdraws another cigarette.

“Can I have one?” L.H. blurts.

From the expression on her face, L.H. can tell she’s more amused than impressed, but she extends the case in his direction. L.H. extracts a cigarette and watches carefully as the woman lights her own. He copies her actions, placing the filter between his lips, then bending forward and inhaling lightly as she reaches out to touch the flame of her antique silver lighter to its other end.

Things are going well, he thinks…until he inhales actual smoke and promptly begins to choke.

He’s used to her laughing at him by now.

“I’m Jocelyn,” she says, when he’s finished coughing and wheezing and she’s finished laughing about it. “Jocelyn Darnell.”

She extends her hand for him to shake. In a burst of inspiration, he takes the hand and lifts it to his lips, brushing them lightly across her knuckles.

She laughs again, but this time it’s more of a giggle. “Smooth,” she says, “but you forgot the part where you tell me _your_ name.”

L.H. blushes again. “L.H. McCoy.”

“L.H.,” she repeats. “And what does that stand for?”

L.H. makes a face. “Leonard Horatio,” he admits.

Taking back her hand, Jocelyn uses it to pluck the still burning cigarette from L.H.’s fingers. She tosses both his and hers over the balcony. “Alright, Leonard Horatio, let’s go.”

He decides not to ask her where or why, just follows her back into the party and waits by the front door as told while she says goodbye to her friends. He watches them aim skeptical looks in his direction, but Jocelyn laughs them off, picks him back up at the door and takes him back to her place.

L.H. isn’t stupid. He knows it’s a pity fuck.

But it works.

 

 

She tells him she’ll call, but he knows better than to wait by the phone.

When she shows up on his doorstep a month later, he’s surprised, to say the least – he didn’t even know she knew where he lived – but he ushers her inside and shuts the door behind her.

“I’m pregnant,” she announces.

L.H.’s heart jumps into his throat. “But we…I mean…” he stutters.

Jocelyn sighs. “Relax,” she says. “It’s not yours. I just need someone to take care of it. You said you were a med student.”

L.H. should tell her he’s not authorized to perform procedures and that she has to go to the university clinic, but finds himself nodding instead.

“I need to get some things,” he says at last. “Come back tomorrow night.”

Jocelyn nods back and leaves without another word.

When she returns, L.H. scans her with a tricorder before administering the hypos and learns that she was telling the truth.

She was pregnant.

And it wasn’t his.

 

 

Later, he learns that it wasn’t an accident. It was an attempt on her part to solidify a relationship with a well born boy she’d been seeing for almost a year before she met L.H. His parents hadn’t considered her a worthy match, and she could feel him withdrawing from her, but she’d thought a baby might convince him to stand up for her.

It hadn’t.

When she confides this to him, as they lie side by side on his far too narrow bed, it strikes L.H., perhaps belatedly, that they’ve become friends.

Friends with a highly unreliable schedule of benefits based on whims he is completely unable to predict, but friends all the same.

At first, it’s not a bad arrangement. L.H. gets help at the parties he hates so much and a place to stick his dick sometimes, and all he has to do is be available to Jocelyn whenever she needs him and be willing to make himself scarce when she doesn’t.

It takes at least six more months before it occurs to L.H. to complain.

They’re at yet another party. Jocelyn introduces L.H. to some useful people and even sticks around for a while to get the conversation flowing. L.H. keeps talking to one of them about some research he’s been doing, even after Jocelyn drifts away, but he watches her out of the corner of his eye as she works the room. When things start to wind down, she’s only talking to one of her girlfriends, the one who threw the party, and L.H. (and his dick) figures he’s got a pretty good shot at taking her back to his place in a few minutes.

He excuses himself from his conversation and goes to get their coats. He’s halfway to Jocelyn’s side, her coat draped over his arm, when the man appears on the other side of the room, seemingly out of nowhere.

He sees her eyes light up.

He knows what that look means.

And, suddenly, he’s sick of it.

He closes the distance between them in four long steps and tries to place the coat over her shoulders. Jocelyn shrugs it off.

“Thank you, Len,” she says without bothering to look at him, keeping her eyes on the new man, “but I think I’ll stay a little while longer.”

L.H. knows he’s been dismissed, but he stands his ground. “Forget about him,” he pleads softly. “He’ll just turn out like all the rest. Come on, let’s go.”

“Go on without me,” she says, still not looking at him, smiling now at the man as he heads their way. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“No,” L.H. says, softly but firmly, “you won’t.”

He’s tired of being her fallback, the one who’s only good enough until something better comes along. He turns around and leaves, dropping her coat over the back of a chair on the way.

She doesn’t follow.

 

 

The thing is, they both know his ultimatums are for shit.

When his comm console chimes the following morning, L.H. knows it’s going to be her and he doesn’t even hesitate to answer.

Only it’s not her.

It’s his mother.

He hasn’t seen her face or heard her voice in almost six years. He didn’t even know she knew he was here.

_“Your father is dying, L.H. It’s time to come home.”_

 

 

It feels strange to ring the bell at what used to be his own home. When his mother answers, he doesn’t know what to say. She studies him for long moments, but doesn’t find words either. She leads him back to his father’s room.

When L.H. sees his father from the doorway, lying on the bed under dimmed lights, he recovers the power of speech. “Why didn’t you call me sooner?” he asks under his breath.

His mother doesn’t answer.

L.H. steels himself as he approaches the bed, wills himself to see the man as just another patient, a case study, a scientific problem to be solved.

David McCoy has lost about a third of his body weight, L.H. estimates, even before picking up a tricorder to confirm. Dehydration, inflammation of the joints and muscles, loss of bone density. L.H. knows without asking that his father – no, David – hasn’t been out of bed in days, maybe weeks. The array of items cluttering the bedside table confirms this suspicion.

L.H. lets his eyes skim over the rest of the tricorder readings before setting it down next to a hypo and a neat row of vials – the strongest painkiller available to a man with a medical license. He leans closer to study David’s face.

Sallow skin, unfocused eyes, lips that tremble as he whispers, “Son.”

“Shh,” L.H. whispers back, feeling a matching tremor in his own hand as he brushes hair from his father’s – from _David’s_ forehead. “Save your energy. It’s going to be fine. I’m going to fix this.”

David turns his head slowly to one side and then to the other and tries to speak again, but L.H. doesn’t let him.

“Shh,” he says again. “I’ll be right back.”

He leaves the room and his mother follows.

“Why didn’t you call me sooner?” He snaps the question this time, voice low and tone harsh as he strides down the hall toward his father’s office.

“I could ask you the same thing,” she fires back.

The accusations hang heavy in the air, but when she speaks again, her voice has softened.

“There’s nothing to be done.”

“The hell there isn’t.” L.H. stabs at the screen of the drug synthesizer, entering the strings of complex compounds from memory. “There are people I can call. Daddy’s still valuable to the Empire. They can—”

“No,” Eleanor says. “He doesn’t want that.”

L.H. turns from the screen to look at her, his eyes blazing. “You mean _you_ don’t want that.”

She meets his gaze with absolute conviction. “I mean _he_ doesn’t want that.”

“Fuck your politics, Mama. This is his _life_.”

“Exactly,” Eleanor says, in that tone L.H. remembers so well from childhood – lilac laced with steel. “This is his _life_. And he will not owe it to your Empire.”

L.H. raises an eyebrow. “ _My_ Empire?”

Eleanor’s lips press together in a thin line.

L.H. snatches the vial from the synthesizer and leaves her standing silently in the office as he returns to his father’s beside. He presses the hypo gently to his father’s neck.

“It’s something special I cooked up in the lab a few months ago,” he tells his father, not without pride. “Better relief, fewer side effects. It’ll put you to sleep for a little while, but when you wake up it’ll be worth it.” He watches as the tension lines on his father’s face slowly begin to smooth out, thinks he sees the ghost of a smile. “I’ll fix this,” he promises again as his father goes under.

 

 

It takes the rest of the evening, but L.H. gets the leads he needs, finds the man he needs to talk to, figures out how to make his appeal.

Still, it will have to be made in person.

L.H. calls a hovercab and makes it to Atlanta just in time to catch the midnight shuttle to New York. He grits his teeth and makes the trip. He shows up at the man’s lab first thing the next morning on less than three hours sleep. He extols his father’s service to the Empire for the official record. Unofficially, he extols his own imminent accomplishments and makes a variety of promises he only hopes he can actually keep.

He throws in a blowjob for good measure and leaves with an appointment in one week’s time for his father to become the very first recipient of an experimental but highly promising treatment for pyrrhoneuritis.

 

 

When L.H. gets back home later that evening, his father is dead.

His mother’s work is sloppy. He could tip an investigator, see her rot in an Empire prison. A part of him wants to.

He fixes it, instead.

Removes any and every sign that it was anything other than a natural death.

He leaves that night without saying goodbye.

He won’t be coming back.

 

 

When he finally checks his comm, he has a message from Jocelyn. It’s over twelve hours old. He makes one stop on his way from the transport station and then goes directly to her apartment. It’s already after midnight and it takes her a few minutes to answer the door.

Some other girl might look confused or disheveled.

Jocelyn looks almost perfectly composed.

It’s the _almost_ that propels L.H. through the door.

She takes the tiniest of steps backwards and L.H. resists the urge to smile. She crosses her arms over her chest. “So we’re over our little outburst, then?”

L.H. almost laughs.

He’s _so_ over it. She has no idea.

“I’m it for you,” he says without preamble, stepping forward suddenly, directly into her personal space. “You think you can do better, but you’re wrong. You can’t. You’re the first daughter of a third son of the daughter of a man who meant something. You’ve got good breeding, impeccable social skills, and a few connections, but it’s not enough. It’s never going to be enough. Not for what you want.”

Her face curls into a sneer. He knows it’s to keep from crumbling. “Fuck you, Len.”

L.H. nods. “Till death do us part,” he says.

Her eyes widen. “What makes you think you can just—?”

“We both want to climb, but we’re going to have to do it the hard way. I’m too smart to get stuck in some dead-end hospital just because I didn’t kiss the right ass at the right time. And you’re too smart to be wasting your skills trying to trap a man.”

He sees her lips part automatically, ready to issue a protest. He sees them close again as his words begin to sink in.

“We’re good together,” he says. A statement of fact, not a plea. “And we’re getting married.”

Going down on one knee would send the wrong message. He pulls the ring box from his jacket pocket and hands it to her, watching as she flips it open.

She looks down at the ring and then back up at him, like she’s just noticed him standing there for the first time. He can see so clearly now that he’s been going about it all wrong, that he’s never really earned her respect.

Until tonight.

She lifts the ring from the box and slips it onto her own finger.

Five minutes later, he’s watching the diamond glisten and flicker between his own fingers as he pins her palms against the wall and takes her from behind, fucking her with his newfound confidence until she falls apart screaming his name.

 

 

The wedding is large and formal and L.H. takes no part in its planning.

Jocelyn invites every last member of her very extended family.

L.H. invites not one single member of his.

Jocelyn’s mother sends a tailor to L.H.’s lab to take his measurements and a tuxedo shows up at his apartment two days later. All that’s left for L.H. to do is to put it on on the right day, stand up at the right place at right the time, and say ‘I do.’

Which he does.

One week after the ceremony, L.H. receives another visit at his lab. Though he’s only seen holos, the man is unmistakable.

Tiberius Kirk.

Jocelyn’s great-uncle on her father’s side and the most powerful member of her extended family.

The Kirk patriarch’s failure to attend their wedding had frustrated Jocelyn to no end and convinced her of his disapproval, despite a note of apology penned by his personal secretary and accompanied by what L.H. considered an extremely generous monetary gift. L.H. isn’t sure what to make of his appearance here and now, but Tiberius wastes no time enlightening him.

“You know who I am?” Tiberius asks.

L.H. nods. “Yes, sir.”

“Your parents were anti-imperialists.”

There’s no point in lying. “Yes, sir, but I assure you I—”

“You, on the other hand, are more ambitious,” Tiberius continues. “Ambitious enough to have married far above your station.”

L.H. feels a familiar heat rising in his chest. “If you don’t mind my saying so, sir, I think that I—” L.H. doesn’t know how a single raised eyebrow can possess the power to stop him in his tracks, but it does. “Yes, sir.”

“And you’re smart enough to know that all your efforts come to nothing should I withhold or withdraw my approval.”

L.H.’s heart jumps into his throat. “Yes, sir.”

“So when I tell you that I need a favor…?” _So when I tell you to jump…?_

“Whatever you need, sir.” _I’ll ask how high._

Tiberius smiles. It’s a sharp, cold thing. “I’m glad we understand each other. You’re familiar with the fate of my only son and heir?”

L.H. nods. Everybody knows the story of George Kirk. “He made a noble sacrifice for the good of the Empire.”

Tiberius snorts. “He made a foolish sacrifice for the good of a two-bit whore he never should have married in the first place.”

If there’s one thing L.H. has learned over the years, it’s when to keep his mouth shut. Tiberius continues.

“Of course we were led to believe that that sacrifice had been in vain, that the shuttle carrying that woman and his unborn heir had been destroyed along with the _Kelvin_.”

L.H.’s eyes widen. “You mean—?”

“A few years ago, it came to my attention that my grandson, James, is alive and well and living on a colonial backwater called Castius VI. He turned fifteen this year and he has no idea who he is. I’ve had him under surveillance, of course, but now that he’s coming of age, I believe it’s time for a more thorough evaluation of his potential.” Tiberius sneers. “No doubt his _mother_ is already plotting his return to Terra – and her own – but that will not happen on her terms. Indeed, I’ve yet to determine whether it will happen at all.”

L.H. wonders if he’s being asked to rid Tiberius of an unwanted heir. He wonders if he’s ready to play the role of assassin.

“I need someone I can insinuate into his life. Someone whose presence of Castius VI won’t arouse suspicion. Someone young enough to earn his trust and smart enough to evaluate his character.”

L.H. breathes a small sigh of relief. “I appreciate the trust you’re placing in me, sir.”

“See that I don’t regret it. You’ll receive your assignment from the Empire within the week. You’ll be posted on Castius VI at his neighborhood health clinic. There will be no indication of my involvement. Most people will assume you just pissed off the wrong person. Our dear Jocelyn will be livid.”

“I can handle her,” L.H. says with a confidence he almost feels. He thinks over what he’s just heard and frowns. “How am I supposed to befriend him?”

“Don’t worry about that. He’ll come to you.” Tiberius shakes his head. “Either he’s got some little crush on one of the nurses there or he just really enjoys getting into fights.”

***

As she stands up next to Len on their wedding day, promising to honor and obey (and adding the words ‘when it suits me’ in her head), Jocelyn Darnell McCoy feels, with a surprising degree of certainty, that she made the right choice.

As she looks across the table at him two weeks later and asks him to repeat himself (even though she heard every horrifying bit of it the first time), Jocelyn Darnell McCoy knows, without a doubt, that she must have been temporarily insane.

He reaches out and takes her hand. “Trust me,” he says.

And she does.

Sort of.

 

 

Once they actually arrive on Castius VI, the whole trust thing gets very old very fast.

In spite of her exceedingly low expectations, the colony still manages to fall short of them. It lacks natural beauty, artificial beauty and beautiful people. The social scene, if it even merits the description, is painfully dull and utterly without any worthwhile incentives for participation. And there’s absolutely no design industry to speak of, effectively ending her career before it ever got off the ground.

In short, Jocelyn is bored out of her mind.

She may have signed up to play ‘the woman behind the man,’ but she sure as hell didn’t sign up to play housewife.

Especially not to a man who hardly even bothers to come home anymore.

She goes to the clinic after hours one night, expecting to find him banging some nurse, but he’s only working.

Their fight is the most interesting thing to happen to her in weeks.

 

 

The boredom, though, she could live with. (Well, maybe.) What really bothers her is that she knows Len is hiding something.

Knowing Len, it probably is something he genuinely believes will be good for them both.

Knowing Len, it could be a fucking disaster.

She’s supposed to be consulted on these things, damn it. She’s supposed to be _arranging_ them in the first place.

 

 

She’s not sure why she drags him to the Prospector’s Day Ball. It’s not like she cares about the ‘event’ and there are certainly no real connections to be made. Still, her mother’s sent her a new gown all the way from Terra (and from the same collection as the much celebrated Bamazé dress) and it’s not like she’ll have any other opportunity to wear it before it becomes completely passé.

She does enjoy making her entrance.

When she returns from the powder room to find a very pretty teenage boy mooning over her husband, Jocelyn figures the mystery of who Len’s been fucking is finally solved. It’s funny – she didn’t know his tastes ran in that direction.

But there are worse vices in a husband.

As long as this boy understands his place in the whole arrangement.

Jocelyn pastes on a smile and rejoins her spouse, slipping her arm into his and nodding toward the champagne flute in his opposite hand. “You didn’t get me one?” she asks.

He offers her the half-full glass and normally she’d demand her own, but there’s a different point to be made here. What’s his is hers.

She takes a sip, eyeing the boy from over the rim. “Who’s your little friend, Len?”

He’s trying to hide it, but she can tell the kid wants to rip her throat out. Her smile becomes a little more genuine.

“Just some kid from the clinic,” Len says. “Likes to get himself beat all to hell every other week or so.”

The kid doesn’t like that answer, but mostly keeps it off his face as he steps forward and extends his hand. “Jim,” he says. “Jim Trenton.”

“Jocelyn McCoy.” She slides her arm from Len’s and shakes his hand.

“So nice to _finally_ meet you,” the kid says. “How do you like it here on Castius VI?”

Jocelyn recognizes it for the dig it is, but takes another sip of her drink and refuses to rise to the bait. “Such a charming little colony,” she says.

As their eyes meet, something about him strikes her as familiar. She tilts her head a bit, openly studying him, but she can’t get the right context. She opens her mouth to ask him about his parents, but suddenly Len is snatching the flute from her hand and placing it on a passing waiter’s tray.

“Let’s dance,” he says, dragging her off onto the floor without giving her a chance to argue.

She flashes the kid one last triumphant look and lets the puzzle slip from her mind.

 

 

That night, she dreams she’s back on Terra at the annual family reunion.

_She’s seven years old and all dressed up in ribbons and bows, laughing and playing with her girl cousins on the wide, green lawn of the Kirk estates._

_Madeleine is chasing her and she hears her mother calling to her not to run, but it’s too late and she goes crashing into a pair of long, hard legs clad in dashing dress whites. She falls back onto the ground and knows her mother will yell at her for the grass stains on her dress, but then strong arms are lifting her back to her feet and, instead of scolding her, her cousin George is smiling down at her and tucking a loose curl back behind her ear._

_She smiles back for a brief moment before the other girls catch up to her and sweep her away with them, hands clasped over their mouths to hide their giggles. When they’ve escaped to a safe distance, Jocelyn makes her declaration._

_“When I get old enough,” she says, “I’m going to marry George Kirk.”_

_Sissy, who’s ten and a half, snorts and rolls her eyes. “You’re not allowed to marry your first cousin,” she says. “And besides, he’s already got a wife. She’s pretty.”_

_They all turn to look at the woman standing next to George. She_ is _pretty._

_“He’s not her first cousin. He’s her first cousin once removed,” says Emily, who’s almost twelve and knows about such things. “And no one likes his wife anyway.”_

_“Still,” Sissy says._

_Emily shrugs. “Still,” she agrees._

_But Jocelyn has stopped listening. She’s too busy watching the way George Kirk’s thick blond hair seems to shine in the sun._

 

 

When Jocelyn wakes up, she knows who Jim ‘Trenton’ is.

She’ll have to confirm, of course, but a few quick calculations in her head only strengthen her conviction.

She knows who must have sent Len here and she knows why.

She also knows that the Darnell branch of the family has no interest in seeing the return of the Kirk heir.

She waits until Len leaves for the clinic, making sure to kiss him goodbye.

This, she knows, is where they part ways. She just didn’t expect it to come so soon.

Still in her dressing gown, she sits down in front of the comm and routes a message to Terra.

 

***

Jocelyn is waiting for him in bed when L.H. receives the urgent communication from Terra. He’s on his feet in a second, pulling on a pair of pants and shoving his feet into the nearest shoes.

“Len? Where are you going?”

“Just an emergency at the clinic,” he lies. “I’ll be back soon.” He’s only got seconds to spare, but L.H. takes the time to walk to the bed, to lean over and to kiss her goodbye. They’ve made their choices. “Don’t wait up,” he says.

He closes the bedroom door and breaks into a run.

 

 

L.H. takes no pleasure in betraying Jim.

In his messages to Tiberius Kirk, L.H. has described Jim as bright, but unfocused. Not without potential, but generally unmotivated and possessed of far too quick and unpredictable a temper.

It’s the kind of attitude that should have driven L.H. crazy, and yet, almost from the day they met, there’s been a certain…fondness for the kid that he hasn’t been able to quell. A fondness that gets in the way sometimes, clouds his judgment, makes him see things that aren’t there.

It’s not even _that_ sort of thing, at first, but the fucking – when it starts – doesn’t help.

He starts to imagine that he’s gotten it all wrong. That Jim is some kind of political mastermind playing everyone he meets, just lying in wait to take over the Empire. And as L.H. steps off the shuttle and onto Terran soil, he has to resist an almost physical urge to throw caution to the wind, grab Jim’s arm and run.

But he doesn’t.

And now, from the comfort of a job in the Empire’s top laboratory that men twice his age have killed for, L.H. sees that that would have been foolish. He’s been keeping track of Jim from afar – reading the gossip rags, tuning into the occasional celebrity/entertainment feed – and whatever the look on Jim’s face as L.H. turned him over to his grandfather, it’s clear that life on the Kirk estates has not been a hardship.

As far as L.H. can tell, Jim’s new existence consists of a continuous loop of fast cars, fancy clothes and fancier parties, followed by after-parties, followed by after-after-parties, followed by wet and wild orgies in the well appointed bedrooms of the rich and famous, all fueled by drinks and drugs and a miracle hangover cure L.H. once made the mistake of sharing with the kid.

In other words, Jim Kirk is bringing all new meaning to the words _indulgence_ , _excess_ and _waste_ and L.H. is well rid of him.

Until he’s not.

Until he’s summoned back to the Kirk estates for reasons undisclosed.

He expects the butler to answer the door. Instead, it’s Jim. Looking too damn good as always.

The grin on Jim’s face should scare him.

The grin on Jim’s face _does_ scare him.

Especially when Jim opens his mouth and, in lieu of accusations or recriminations, it’s just: “Hey, Bones. Granddaddy’s waiting for you in his office.”

He points the way and L.H. goes. When he gets there, Tiberius informs L.H. that his grandson has been given enough time to sow his wild oats and is now being shipped off to the Fleet Academy to make something of himself. _James_ , it seems, has agreed to go quietly on one condition, which Tiberius has granted.

L.H. will be going with him.

Everything inside L.H. is screaming about the injustice of it all, but he keeps his mouth shut. Why bother arguing? He knows when he’s been beat.

When L.H. passes back through the marble foyer, Jim is still standing there, still grinning. He gives L.H. a little wave.

L.H. vows never to underestimate Jim again.


	4. Chapter 4

The worst part is that they’re roommates.

Well, actually, the worst part was leaving behind a promising and prestigious lab position firmly based on Terra to spend endless hours sitting in lecture halls (and, god forbid, flight simulations) with a bunch of randy young psychopaths just jonesing to play space cowboy.

But the roommate thing is a close second.

At first L.H. sleeps with one eye and one ear open, half expecting Jim to off him in his sleep, but Jim just keeps right on like he did that day at his grandfather’s house, talking to L.H. like they’re back on Castius VI – almost friends, no benefits – and like nothing more ever happened between them.

It’s awkward, is what it is.

Unnatural.

They don’t talk about L.H.’s betrayal.

They don’t talk about Jim’s payback.

It’s all, “Hey, Bones. How was Xenobio?” and “Did you hear they gave Olsen an hour in the agony booth?” Like L.H. just up and decided to come to the Academy and it has nothing at all to do with the fact that Jim’s a scheming, manipulative, vindictive bastard.

Like half of L.H. doesn’t hate Jim for it.

Like the other half doesn’t respect the hell out of Jim for it and isn’t kicking the first half for getting Jim so wrong in the first place.

In short, living with Jim is driving L.H. crazy.

And the fact that Jim seems to relish walking around the dorm nearly or entirely naked really doesn’t help.

A few days into the semester, Jim wanders out from a water shower and into the center of the room with nothing but a towel. A towel he’s using to _dry his hair_. When he pulls it away from his head, he catches L.H. staring and flashes him a familiar smirk that makes L.H.’s dick twitch in his pants.

L.H. watches, mesmerized, as Jim, skin still glistening with moisture, stalks slowly toward where L.H. sits on the edge of the bed.

Jim stops just in front of L.H. and his tongue darts out to wet his lips, making them shine like the rest of him. “See something you like?” he asks.

It’s not like L.H. doesn’t know it’s a trap.

But still.

“Yeah,” he breathes.

Jim just stands there, perfectly still, for a long moment.

Then he drops the damp towel in L.H.’s lap. “Sorry,” he says with a shrug. “I don’t fuck the help.”

L.H. looks down and Jim turns away and ten minutes later it’s like it never happened.

For Jim, at least.

Naturally, the naked time continues. But after another week or two, Jim stops even bothering with the pretext of a shower.

L.H. hates his fucking life.

 

 

And it’s not like he can just go off and do his own thing. Not with Jim bounding in and out of dangerous situations like an adolescent opossum hopped up on stims. Not that L.H. actually _cares_ whether the kid goes and gets himself killed, but he’s smart enough realize that Jim’s good health is the only thing standing between him and Jocelyn’s fate.

That’s all.

In their first six months at the Academy, Jim somehow manages to garner three concussions, five broken bones, and a shocking variety of more superficial flesh wounds.

Not to mention the stabbing.

Or either of the poisonings.

It’s a good thing L.H. happens to be a damn good doctor.

 

 

Still, L.H. does get out of the room, attends med track classes that command track students can’t take, picks up several shifts a week at the Academy clinic.

He spends whole hours beyond Jim’s presence.

He meets people.

In the spring, he gets a repeat patient named Krempa. Command track, but a few years older than Jim, and a fellow Southerner.

L.H. likes to listen to him talk.

L.H. likes what he has to say.

He starts to think they might be useful to each other.

 

 

Then one night Jim comes home beaten all to hell and grinning like a loon.

L.H. scowls. “Damn it, kid. It ever occur to you that there’re some fights you might could walk away from?”

Jim just laughs. “Not this one, Bones. And, besides, you should see the other guy.”

L.H. rolls his eyes, pulls a chair up to Jim’s bed and gestures for him to sit on its edge. Still grinning (even though it’s gotta make that split lip sting like a bitch), Jim sits, spreading his legs wide and leaving them there until L.H. gives in and positions himself between them.

L.H. sighs and checks Jim’s eyes for signs of concussion, then runs his hands over Jim’s torso to check for signs of internal bleeding.

(They both know he could just use a tricorder.)

He runs a dermal regenerator over the worst of the body bruising before beginning the more delicate task of fixing Jim’s face. He starts at the forehead and works his way down, trying to ignore the peircing blue of those eyes even as he treats the purple around them.

“You know,” L.H. mutters under his breath, “there are actually better things I could be doing with my time than patching up your sorry ass.”

“No,” Jim says, shaking his head, “there really, really aren’t.”

“Shut up and hold still,” L.H. grunts, steadying Jim’s jaw with one hand as the other repairs his lower lip.

The split seals and L.H. draws back. Jim automatically tests the plump, pink skin with the tip his tongue, leaving it shiny and slick. L.H. feels himself listing forward, but before he can straighten up, Jim’s fist tightens in the front of his shirt and suddenly that plush, perfect lip is slammed against his own.

Rising from the bed, swift and smooth, Jim shoves L.H. in the chest, sending the chair (and L.H.) crashing to the floor. With the wind knocked out of him and Jim planted on top of him tearing at his clothes, it takes a moment before L.H. can draw enough breath to point out that:

“There are two perfectly good beds in here.”

But Jim only lifts up enough to roll L.H. over onto his stomach, curling his fingers around the back of L.H.’s neck and pinning his face to the floor.

“Shut up and hold still,” he says.

 

 

“What happened to not fucking the help?” L.H. asks later, when they’re lying in their respective beds, both sporting new bruises L.H. hasn’t bothered to heal.

He only wishes he was complaining.

He’s really, really not.

And from the smugness of Jim’s tone, Jim knows it.

“It came to my attention that the nature of our relationship was in need of clarification.”

 

 

L.H. isn’t exactly basking in the clarity when he shows up for his clinic shift the next day.

That is, until he checks last night’s intake records.

Cadet Krempa was admitted with two broken bones, three cracked ribs, a dislocated shoulder and a Grade III concussion.

_“You should see the other guy.”_

Clear enough, then.

 

 

L.H. knows that look in Jim’s eyes.

He knows it the same way he knows that an early spring frost kills a peach blossom, that a stinging sensation in the lower spine means Urodelan flu, and that an insubordinate eye roll to a superior gets you ten minutes in the agony booth (fifteen minutes if someone else was watching).

In other words, from experience.

 _Intimate_ experience, in this case, combined with inescapable proximity.

After nearly three years of living in each other’s back pockets, a relatively predictable system has been established. Well, a system of predictable unpredictability.

Which is to say that Jim fucks L.H. on his own schedule and L.H. fucks Jim not at all.

Meanwhile, Jim fucks other people in his free time and finds no lack of willing partners. L.H. is, of course, free to fuck other people _in theory_ , but after a couple more hospitalizations, the willing partners dry up pretty fast. The dynamic isn’t so much egalitarian, but it’s not exactly unfamiliar, either, and L.H. is starting to wonder if he’s got a type.

Still, even through nearly three years of marriage, Jocelyn’s moods and mindsets retained a certain enigmatic quality. A beguiling element of mystery.

Not so, Jim.

“Evening, Bones.”

As soon as he turns and catches sight of Jim, slowly surveying his domain as he leans in their open doorway, L.H. hits save on the report he’s working on. (One long night spent sitting on a sore ass and replicating lost work while Jim basked in blissful post-orgasmic slumber made for a hell of an object lesson.)

L.H. scowls in honor of the memory.

Jim just smirks back at him.

“Why are you so happy?” L.H. grumbles, even as he carefully sets his PADD aside, well, _well_ out of the way. L.H. has learned to read any number of looks to be found in Jim’s eyes at a second’s glance, and this one means that L.H. is about to get fucked.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jim says, his tone completely at odds with the way he practically stalks into the room.

Okay, so at least a dozen of Jim’s looks mean that L.H. is about to get fucked, but this particular look means that Jim is in the mood to have fun with it.

L.H. rolls his eyes and strips off his shirt. “No, I don’t suppose you do.”

Not that Jim’s going to be all gentle or some shit, but he’s likely to take his time, maybe make his way through a few different positions before he lets himself finish.

Jim grins as he slides his uniform jacket off his shoulders and kicks off his boots. “You’re so well trained.”

At least he’ll probably let L.H. come, too – though he might make him beg for it first. (L.H. opposes this prospect on general principle, of course, but he also knows his principles are no match for Jim’s patience and persistence.)

“Fuck you,” L.H. mutters, even as he pushes his pants down over his hips.

Jim just laughs, opens his fly, looks L.H. in the eye and then points his gaze toward the floor.

L.H. drops to his knees and opens wide.

 

 

“I’m taking the test again,” Jim announces about half an hour later.

He’s got L.H. bent over the desk now and is cheerfully working a fourth finger into L.H.’s ass.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” L.H. groans.

The response applies to Jim’s statement, to Jim’s finger and to Jim’s obnoxious proclivity for striking up conversation when he knows L.H. is doing his level best to keep his goddamn mouth shut. (Lord knows what humiliating things might come out of it at times like these.)

“Yeah,” Jim says, removing all the fingers and replacing them with two thumbs to hold L.H. open, “tomorrow morning and I want you there.”

Jim pushes his cock in alongside his thumbs and L.H. hisses at the sudden burning fullness.

“You know,” L.H. rasps, hating the sound of his own voice, “I’ve got better things to do than watch you embarrass yourself for the third time.”

L.H. braces both arms and legs in a desperate effort to keep his own cock from being slammed into the edge of the desk as Jim withdraws and reenters with a sharp thrust.

“Oh yeah?” Jim asks. “Like what?”

Jim pulls his thumbs from L.H.’s ass so he can take hold of L.H.’s hips and readjust them before aiming his next thrust. It definitely hits the target, forcing L.H. to take several deep, panting, _humiliating_ breathes before continuing.

“I’m a doctor, Jim. I’m busy.”

L.H. feels Jim’s fingertips pressing familiar bruises into his skin as Jim’s cock finds his prostate in three more sharp thrusts, bringing L.H. close to the edge. Then suddenly Jim’s movement slows, becomes…thoughtful.

“Bones – it doesn’t bother you that no one’s ever passed the test?”

It _bothers_ L.H. that at the rate Jim’s now going with his shallow, pensive strokes, L.H. won’t be getting off until next fucking Tuesday. But damned if he’s going to beg the asshole to shut up and focus.

“Jim,” he says through gritted teeth, “it’s the Kobayashi Maru. _No one_ passes the test.” L.H. tries clenching a bit around Jim’s cock, hoping to encourage a little action. “And no one goes back for seconds,” he continues when nothing improves. “Let alone _thirds_.”

L.H. clenches again, but Jim doesn’t move. Or answer. L.H. lifts his head from the desk and starts to turn, but it falls back down with a thud when Jim suddenly resumes his previous pace. Before L.H.’s body can get back with the program, he feels Jim tense and then come inside him.

L.H. feels his own hips pushing back without his permission in a desperate attempt to get just that last bit of stimulation, but Jim is already withdrawing, patting L.H. on the ass like the self-centered, condescending bastard he is.

“Guess I’m just feeling lucky,” Jim says, picking up L.H.’s shirt and using it to wipe himself down before wandering across the room to retrieve his own pants.

Standing up straight isn’t exactly comfortable for L.H., but it makes for more effective glaring. “God dammit, Jim, where the fuck are you going?”

“Mmm, sorry, Bones, I’ve gotta study.” Jim pulls his shirt on, his head popping through the neck hole to reveal his obnoxious trademark smirk. “Big test tomorrow, you know.”

If looks could kill, Jim would…well, he would have died about two years ago. But that doesn’t stop L.H. from trying. “Study, my ass,” he mutters.

“I have,” Jim says. He pulls on his jacket, then finally spares a pseudo-sympathetic glance for L.H.’s aching dick. “I’m sure you can take care of that on your own, Doctor.”

“Fuck you.”

“No time,” Jim says, “but if it helps, you can pretend I’m here watching.”

By the time L.H.’s hand closes around the nearest available projectile – fortunately not his PADD – it only crashes futilely against the piece of closed door where Jim’s face used to be. L.H. indulges in another minute or so of seething before sighing and settling himself down on the bed with a bottle of his favorite medical grade lube.

It’s not really worth staying angry. So what if Jim’s off sowing his endless supply of wild oats while L.H. keeps the charming company of his very domesticated right hand? The truth is, life could be a lot worse.

L.H. may not get to fuck anyone else, but at least he knows no one else will be fucking with him.

He also knows that Jim has his back.

And that he has Jim’s.

Which is the only reason they’ve both survived the Academy this long.

And even if he doesn’t get any say in when (or where or how fucking long), having Jim’s dick up his ass isn’t exactly torture. L.H. slicks up his hand and starts to finish what Jim started.

And if he _does_ come to the mental image of Jim standing above him, watching, well, that’s nobody’s business but his own.

L.H. used to think it was _mystery_ that made things exciting.

Turns out he’d underestimated the power of mastery.

 

 

“Jesus Christ, kid, how the hell did you do that?” L.H. hisses under his breath as they exit the sim room. The combination of admiration and admonition in his voice (not to mention churning in his gut) are all too familiar. Par for the fucking course, really, as far as life with Jim Kirk is concerned.

Also completely typical are Jim’s cocky swagger and insufferable smirk.

But there’s something else in Jim’s face, too. Barely a flicker, but L.H. catches it and it reminds him of the kid back on Castius VI, the one who never quite managed to hide his desire for L.H.’s approval.

Before L.H. can figure out how to respond, it’s gone.

“Told you I was feeling lucky,” Jim says, practically vibrating with the pent up energy he’d kept so tightly controlled during the test. “I just beat the Kobayashi fucking Maru.”

L.H. casts furtive glances from left to right as they enter the hall, expecting enforcers to swoop down upon them at any moment. “Lucky, my ass,” he mutters. “You cheated.”

Jim’s eyes have grown a bit wild, but they don’t hold even an ounce of chagrin. “I took the necessary steps to achieve the desired outcome.”

“And, what?” L.H. snorts. “You think they’re going to give you a fucking commendation?”

“I stole the ship full of dilithium from the Romulans, kept it out of Klingon hands _without_ having to destroy it, _and_ blew up three warbirds in the process,” Jim reports confidently, like it all happened in real life and not just a sim. “If they’re smart, they’ll skip the commendation and just give me the fucking _Enterprise_.”

L.H. boggles. “Are you out of your mind?”

Jim just laughs. “Hold that thought,” he says. “I just need to…”

Coming to a sudden stop, Jim grabs L.H. by the bicep and yanks him through a door. L.H. has just enough time on his way in to catch the sign that says _Officer’s Washroom_. But before he can protest this further stupidity, Jim has a hand clapped over his mouth and is shoving him up against a wall next to a sonic hand sanitizer.

As far as L.H. can tell, Jim has yet to experience a single strong emotion (or even many weak ones) that he couldn’t translate into an expression of his libido, like some special form of anti-sublimation for geniuses.

Even with only one hand free, Jim makes short work of L.H.’s pants. They hang at L.H.’s knees, as Jim spits into his own hand and rubs it over his dick, before taking L.H. hard and fast. The way his cheek is pressed against the wall, L.H. can see the whole thing in the mirror, watches as Jim pounds into him. Watches as Jim bites L.H.’s shoulder as he comes in L.H.’s ass.

The sight and the feel are enough, and L.H. comes hard against the wall without so much as a hand on his cock, leaving his own teeth marks in Jim’s palm in retaliation. Jim just laughs, ruffling that hand against L.H.’s hair as he pulls out and goes to fix his fly.

Jim’s voice and body language have calmed considerably. He runs his hands under the sonic sanitizer and checks his reflection in the mirror, straightening his uniform jacket. “You were saying, Bones?”

L.H., mostly focused on straightening his own clothes and minimizing the potential mess of Jim’s ejaculate seeping out his ass, doesn’t really remember what he was saying.

Jim steps out of the officer’s washroom and L.H. hastens to follow him, having no wish to be caught there on his own.

“Something about wanting to know if I’m out of my mind,” Jim prompts. “I’m not, by the way.”

L.H. instantly recalls his place in his (whispered) rant. “The question was rhetorical, Jim. And so is this one: _What the hell were you thinking?_ ”

“Hmm,” Jim says, apparently completely unfamiliar with the term _rhetorical_ , “that it was time someone actually beat their test?”

“If they wanted someone to beat their test, they would have made it beatable!” L.H. hisses.

Jim shrugs. “They did.”

“You _cheated_!” L.H. is experiencing an overwhelming urge to tear out his own hair. Or Jim’s. “They’re going to give you the booth for this.”

Jim lifts both hands to the level of his shoulders and flutters them dramatically. “Oh no,” he says, deadpan. “Not the agony booth.”

L.H. scowls. “Damn it, Jim…”

Jim offers a conciliatory smile. “Aw, come on, you love it when I get the agony booth.”

L.H. feels his scowl deepen. Jim in the agony booth isn’t so much something L.H. _loves_ as something that _fills him with abject terror_. It’s the terror of knowing what this world is about. Watching the currents run through Jim’s body, knowing all the while that if anything happens to The Kirk Heir, L.H. won’t even live long enough to attend the funeral.

(Not that he would.)

But apparently that’s not a scenario that keeps _Jim_ up at night. At least not if the number of times Jim’s practically begged for (and received) punishment over the last three years is anything to go by.

Of course, it didn’t take L.H. too long to figure out that it was just the latest phase of what it turns out Jim has been doing for as long as L.H. has known him – making sure that his talents were underestimated and his potential threat dismissed.

Eventually, it occurred to L.H. that the idiot was _also_ trying to build up a tolerance to the apparatus.

And (annoyingly) that it was working.

But still…

“That thing can do lasting neurological damage, you know.”

Jim looks unperturbed. “Good thing I happen to know a brilliant doctor with a particular affinity for all things neurological.”

L.H. rolls his eyes and admits (silently) that he has no one but himself to blame for Jim’s attitude. Once he’d recognized what Jim was doing, L.H. had decided you should never leave a foolhardy, pig-headed adrenaline junkie to do a doctor’s work and had started formulating hypo cocktails for both before and after a booth session to mitigate its effects.

The first set was pretty effective.

He’s been adjusting and tweaking the recipes and protocols ever since.

So the next words out of Jim’s mouth come as no real surprise: “I bet you’ve made lots of improvements that you’re just dying to test out.”

“Damn it, Jim, we’re not talking about five, ten, or even fifteen minutes here. You’ve just delivered a big ole ‘Fuck you’ that’s going to be passed straight on up the goddamn chain of command. By this time tomorrow, you can bet they’ll be making an example of you.”

“Huh,” Jim says. “So I guess that means you’ll be spending all night in the lab shooting up stims and seeing what kind of magic you can work. I know you hate to be unprepared.”

He really does. “Have I told you lately that I hate you?”

Jim smirks. “Aw, you love a challenge.” He bumps L.H. with his shoulder and waggles his eyebrows. “Come on, Bones, admit it – you’re just a little bit excited.”

L.H. will _never_ admit it.

But he kinda is.

 

 

 

There’s a certain sense of satisfaction – along with the usual anxiety and something suspiciously akin to concern – in watching two bulky enforcers escort Jim to the agony booth.

L.H. _does_ enjoy being right.

And he _is_ curious about how Jim will hold up with the hypo L.H. quietly injected into his thigh ten minutes earlier, just after Jim was called to the front of the auditorium.

Of course, L.H. thinks he could do without the audience. Several hundred cadets – and one green-blooded bastard – all no doubt hoping that this will finish Jim Kirk off once and for all.

L.H. figures that, by this point, it’s his goddamn, god-given right to watch Jim suffer.

But as far as he’s concerned, no one else in the room has earned that privilege.

 

 

Jim’s been in the booth about five minutes, and seems to be holding up well, when Admiral Barnett suddenly calls a halt to the proceedings. Seems reports of catastrophic seismic activity are coming in from the Colony of Vulcan. For all that L.H. has never himself enjoyed a conversation with one, Vulcans are unsurpassed scientists and their colony an invaluable imperial resource. With the primary fleet otherwise engaged, the admiralty has apparently decided to send in the cadets.

Talk about a recipe for a clusterfuck.

If L.H. could stay grounded, he would. Jim, of course, has no appreciation for that opportunity.

In the end, L.H. doesn’t really think about it. He just jams the other two hypos he had for Jim’s aftercare into Jim’s neck, immediately triggering a host of somewhat predictable, but rather severe-looking reactions.

That they happen to be painful is a bonus.

L.H. just hopes they’re controllable.

“Can’t you see he’s having a reaction to the booth?” he snaps at some kid with a PADD as he drags a flushed and stumbling Jim onto the transport shuttle for the _I.S.S. Enterprise_. He glances down at the kid’s uniform and looks back up into the kid’s eyes. “Cadet Vinson, is it? So you’re the one I should mention when Tiberius Kirk asks me why the hell I left his grandson to die?”

The kid steps aside and lets them pass.

L.H. just hopes no one else asks him what the hell he just did.

He’s not sure he knows.

 

 

“Why’d you do it, Bones?”

_Damn it._

The battle is over, the _Enterprise_ is on a slow course back to Terra, and the temporary office of the Acting CMO has just been thoroughly christened by the Acting Captain.

L.H.’s martyred ass is feeling the full effects of Jim’s excess adrenaline.

L.H. doesn’t look up from the process of refastening his pants and straightening his tunic. “Do what?”

“Don’t play dumb,” Jim says. “It’s not a good look on you.”

“I don’t have time for this,” L.H. mutters. “I need to get back to Pike.”

“Make time,” Jim says, taking up a position between L.H. and the door. “How’s Pike doing, by the way?”

“He’ll live, but I’m not sure he’ll walk. I’m good, but I may not be that good.”

“You’re not,” Jim says.

L.H. frowns. “I might be.” Possibilities are already whirling around in his head. “I really think if I could just…”

“You’re not that good,” Jim repeats firmly. “And no one expects you to be. Am I making myself clear?”

Very clear. L.H. thinks back on all the time and energy Jim put into quietly cultivating Pike’s patronage back at the academy and wonders how long it will be before Jim suddenly decides that _L.H._ has outlived his usefulness.

Not much point in speculating, he supposes.

He offers Jim a curt nod. “Yes, Captain.”

Jim’s eyes spark at the title and he takes a step toward L.H., voice low. “Say that again,” he says.

L.H. snorts. “Not on your life. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to my ‘patient.’”

Jim shakes his head, slowly, and circles back to his point. “Tell me why you did it, Bones.”

L.H. looks at the floor. “Let it go, Jim.”

“No, come on, tell me.” Jim makes his way closer again, circling around L.H. now. “What? You think Tiberius is going to reward you for this? You think he’ll applaud your initiative? Your out-of-the-box thinking?”

L.H. shakes his head. “I don’t—”

“Because I’ve got news for you, Bones. Tiberius doesn’t like people like him. He likes people he can control. He likes people in the places that he put them. And he’s not going to be pleased to find out that I took captaincy of the fucking Imperial flagship on _your_ watch.”

“I don’t care,” L.H. growls.

“Don’t you?” Jim asks, stopping in front of L.H.

“No.”

“What are you going to tell him in your next little report?”

L.H. meets Jim’s eyes. “I don’t report to him.”

Jim snorts. “Oh, really? And I suppose you never reported back to him from Castius VI, either.”

L.H. sighs. “You know I did.”

“So what changed?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re telling me he never asked?”

“Of course he asked.”

“And you…?”

“Ignored him.”

Jim smirks. “And then…?”

“And then nothing.” L.H. shrugs. “He stopped asking. I don’t know why.”

“Huh.” Jim tilts his head in mock thought. “Might have something to do with the way I hacked your comm and sent fake updates on your behalf. Apparently, you find me very impulsive and unfocused, but secretly think I look hot in my cadet reds.”

L.H. blinks at Jim in disbelief and fights a strange urge to smile. “Damn it, Jim.”

Jim drops his own smirk. “Time’s up, Bones. Tell me why you did it.”

L.H. looks at the ground and manages one last feeble protest. “I don’t—”

“Tell me.”

“Because I made a mistake, okay?” L.H.’s head snaps up and his eyes meet Jim’s. “Is that what you wanted to hear? I never should have turned you over to Tiberius. I knew it as soon as I did it – before, even. You’re twice the man your grandfather ever was. More.” With that admission, the wind disappears from L.H.’s sails as quickly as it filled them, leaving him not empty, but lighter. Free. “I’m sorry, okay. I’m sorry. When are you going to stop punishing me?”

And Jim smiles, then, as genuine as L.H. has ever seen. “Bones, Bones, Bones,” he says, shaking his head, “I haven’t been punishing you.”

L.H. raises a highly skeptical eyebrow.

“Well,” Jim amends, smile melting back into a smirk, “not _only_.”

Jim reaches out and smoothes an imaginary wrinkle from L.H.’s blue tunic. L.H. bats his hand away.

“I’m not the only one who looks good in uniform,” Jim continues, like it’s a real explanation. “And besides, I needed someone around to wash – I mean _watch_ – my back, and, you know, patch me up once in a while.”

 _More like all the fucking time._ L.H. scowls because it’s what he does, but Jim isn’t paying attention as he sweeps his hands wide.

“Look around you, Bones. This is ours for the taking. And it’s just the beginning. There’s a whole universe out there just waiting to be conquered.” Jim takes a deep breath and looks L.H. straight in the eyes. “But I can’t do it without you.” Jim pauses, reconsiders. “Well, I _could_ , but it wouldn’t be nearly as fun.”

L.H. holds Jim’s gaze. “I’m not your woman, Jim.”

“And I’m not an idiot. As much as I’d love to keep you locked up in my quarters, waiting on your knees, I need you in medical, and beaming down to hostile planets by my side. You may be pretty, but you’re also on your way to being the best doctor the Fleet’s ever seen. And I’m going to be its best captain. And together we’re going to take the Empire by storm.”

Jim’s confidence – his _vision_ – is seductive, but L.H. isn’t about to give in that easily.

“And what makes you think I want all that? You’re done with Tiberius and that means Tiberius is done with me. I’m free now. Free to go back to my nice, cushy, _dirtside_ job. Why the hell would I follow your sorry ass out into the black?”

The question doesn’t seem to faze Jim in the least. “You mean _besides_ the fact that I’m pretty sure you’re in love with me?”

L.H. rolls his eyes, but doesn’t bother to confirm or deny. “Yeah,” he says dryly, “besides that.”

“Because you always want more,” Jim says. “You wanted more than to be a small town doctor like your dad. You wanted more than the kind of job they give to competent people with no connections. And you made a good run of it, too. You married way the hell out of your league with Jocelyn, which is impressive in and of itself, but then when it came down to her scheme or yours, you came out on top. Shows follow through.” Jim is smiling again. “You’re good, Bones. You’re really good. But I’m better. I’m the best thing that’s ever gonna happen to you, and you’d be a fool not to see it. Or to let it get away.”

It’s almost like déjà vu. Like L.H. standing before Jocelyn almost seven years earlier saying ‘now or never,’ and just like that, L.H. knows how to play his hand. How to place his bet.

He’s all in.

He looks at Jim. “My daddy didn’t raise a fool,” he says.

Jim nods. “Neither did my mom.” He lifts his hand and places it between them. “You and me, Bones?”

L.H. lifts his own hand to clasp Jim’s. “You and me,” he says.

A second later, he tightens his grip and tugs sharply, causing Jim to fall against his chest. He tilts his head so his lips nearly brush Jim’s ear. “Does this mean I get to fuck you again sometime?”

Jim laughs, hooks his ankle around L.H.’s and throws his weight backwards, taking L.H. off balance and using their still clasped hands to twist L.H.’s arm up and behind his back, rendering him immobile.

“I’d like to see you try,” Jim says.

 

***

_I need to tell you something, Jimmy. Something successful people know, but no one ever admits. You can’t do it alone. It doesn’t matter how good you are, no one can watch his own back. So you need to find someone that you can trust absolutely. Someone whose fate you’re willing to link to your own and who’s willing to do the same. It’s not easy, but it can be done. No matter what Tiberius or anyone else tells you, your father didn’t sacrifice himself for the Empire. He did it for me. And for you. Because he loved me, and I loved him back, and we had such big plans for you, our firstborn son._

_I’m not saying that everything I did, every lie I told, was just for you. But you’re too smart to believe that, anyway. You’re also too smart not to realize that, no matter my motives, I still did what was best for you. Yes, I needed security and, yes, I craved revenge. I wasn’t about to let Tiberius Kirk take away everything I worked for. But all I ever really did was to make you the man your father and I always knew you could be. He never got the chance to give you more than the Kirk name, but I’ve given you everything else I could. The rest is up to you, Jimmy. Choose wisely and the Empire is yours._

 

THE END


End file.
